Mala Fides
by TwistedNym
Summary: One month has passed in Daliah Viper's life trying to reintegrate at court and follow the uneasy trails her eyes have caught.With new responsibilities and split loyalty between her family and the new hands clutching reign tightly as desperately comes a new opportunity, a new uneasy rule over her own house.Her husband though has his very own ideas about taking over.
1. 1: Concentrate

**_'ᴡᴇ ꜱʜᴀʀᴇ ᴀ ꜱᴇɴᴛɪᴍᴇɴᴛ. ɪ ᴄᴀɴ ʙᴇ ʙᴏᴜɢʜᴛ ᴡɪᴛʜ ʙʟᴏᴏᴅ ᴀɴᴅ ʀᴇᴠᴇʀᴇɴᴄᴇ.'_**

**_Only one month has passed in Daliah Viper's life trying to reintegrate at court and follow the uneasy trails her eyes have /  
One month filled with blood, tribulations, and lies. With new responsibilities and split loyalty between her family and the new hands clutching reign tightly as desperately comes a new opportunity, a new uneasy rule over her own /  
And since Samson has his very own ideas of taking over, the alliance formed with her husband still stands shakier than anything..._**

**_mala fides- bad faith; intent to deceive._**

* * *

_concentrate_

_-to bring or direct toward a common center or objective_

_-to gather into one body, mass, or force_

_-to accumulate (a toxic substance) in bodily tissues _

* * *

_**W**_e shake strapped in seats, and the only sounds penetrating the inside of the convoy is the fine rattling of metal or the shuffling of feet. The rustling of uniforms. The static shifting of a signal incoming on a radio.

Right next to me, Hector Viper sifts his fingers into his belt and smooths over it while he talks.

I barely listen with one ear, eyes glancing around, taking in the silent forms. The hardened faces. I barked general commands in Archeon. Now I have to leave the choice of positions and vantage points to people that are in the position to demand them.

I have as little power over anything that happens here as I had strapped to a wall in manacles, spitting and biting in a cell. It rubs me off the wrong way and tingles on my nerves. I feel incompetent. I don't like feeling incompetent_. _But such is the nature of soldiers in an army. We are disposable.

_We are disposable as the creatures we breed and the alliances we make._

War makes widows. War makes corpses. War makes an army. War makes fighters.

This is the very machinery of war. I would consider this the drumbeat of it.

My vision rocks, staring out of the armored window into the world, a sky filled with dazzling clouds of smoke.

Ruins.

A city made of something broken but still standing longer than any bone could withstand turning to dust. A place that should be filled with something very much fouler than any smog or polluting light in Archeon.

Radiation isn't a joke. It was a warning graced on the search party in the tunnels. It was written on maps and mouths on how it twists and cripples. This city is flawless and void of it.

Seemingly empty. But not yet. Not really.

It seems almost ironic now that the force drips down over ruins after swiping the rebels under the carpet of propaganda and then simply adjusting to the internal set of lies to use them. And with the sliver of something unforeseeable and perhaps a hint of incompetence and a spark of too many emotions, everything has turned foul now.

I would laugh. If I felt like it.

Instead, I see myself, pushed back hair, scars fresh on my mouth and cheek.

One more, to the right, over my eye, and in the dim reflection without color, I could vaguely resemble a woman that spoke my name as her last breath.

A fist curls in my stomach, hot anger pulsing tightly.

She didn't see me fit for duty at a front.

She wouldn't let everyone make decisions about her people's life without her.

She is gone. Gone, gone, gone.

But she was a precise woman of war.

I never was. I'm feeling too old in my skeleton. But the truth is, I am painfully inexperienced in fights that go over the capacity of a few dozen.

My dislike about it has brought me this far. But in a delicate situation of strategic input, it is useless, asinine, and the worst thing, just as Samson always told me: It can be exhaustingly repetitive.

Not that he would have any clue what to do. No, the bastard has sat his bony sharp ass inside my chair and will just hide in the distance until he can garner some remains and play his upper hands.

My palms around the rifle cramp and clutch tightly, as if the metal can save me from some foul trickery in my skull.

My dislike can't take anything from me now. All personal feelings have a place to be erased, hidden until enacted in savory blood and a nice price.

_But I'll cut him into tiny strips no healer can mend if he ever comes too close to it again._

"Lady Viper," Hector's head to my right, moving into my personal space. I snap back. Swallow the chunk that is suffocating me down. Then I simply clutch my rifle again. "I was just informed you're not going to stay with us."

I don't get to answer. The wheels stop turning abruptly and we halt.

If war has a smell, I can suck it into my nostrils and rub it on my skin now through the cracks in the door opens.

It's the fluttering distant smell that rises from the impact of missiles, rubbles, an impact in the silence breaking only with the sounds the wheels make as they scrape over the uneven path.

My brain connects imagery from earlier days in my life, mixes them with later ones. The flapping of the jets above, the hurling, lingering sounds of impact. The feet and the rubble.

The smell of bodies surrounding you. The smell of a gun before a shot is let loose. A finger lingering close to a trigger. The smell of water, earth, and death.

_We all smell that, sooner or later. We all get a taste of the scent._

"You'll inform me about any changes," I tell him, arching my back, posture straight. "I want to know where you were. What you did. And who told you to do it."

Hector isn't one for smiling. Neither am I. But only for a second, we share some convenient nod.

Then, like a good underling and member of my House, he turns to shout commands in my namesake at the black flood of bodies, rifles, and the occasional addition of a creature that has teeth, wings, or another helpful feat. I left the dogs with my father. But they're not war trained anyway, even if they're close to it. They have cushions behind a bird cage now.

I have had bare contact with the black, sleek dog sitting beside one of the figures my dear relative just shouted at.

Hector's hardened hands point at people, orchestrating them like I am so used to orchestrate insects.

He points over to his son and to few figures silently standing to attention. I need a moment to recognize one is Loren, because he is neither miserable not terribly smug. He looks only concentrated right now, eyes narrow, keeping himself together. Somehow, I know, he doesn't want to be here, just the same as me. We both have our war stories. His made him spoiled, bratty, overcompensating and entitled. But that is another thought to keep for another day. I can't think about it now. He keeps it together, he keeps his worth. I will forever remember the fist crashing his nose fondly. Whatever his deeds.

"Stay with Lady Viper, take the escort her east, keep the communication open. You-with Provos. The rest of you with me." He motions over the hill of broken stone ahead.

As much as the smell and the nervous tingling tickles my scalp. Feeling bodies swarming around you that finally are under the restrictions of command and respect towards you and would have to shield you in case of an attack has some invigorating.

* * *

I let a hawk loose in the breath of this world.

It rises from my gloved fist when I thrust upwards, disappears.

A tail feather fighting against gushes of waves as a silvery shadow with rotor blades drifts and sizzles overhead faster than the bird could ever be.

From the perspective of a drifting body in a cloud, the destruction is more visible with a schematic of tactic. Of making sure to encircle and capture as well as ruin what is left. Somewhere in the distance is the ocean.

With something akin to curiosity I realize this is the closest, I have ever been to it.

I can see where Hector and the other Vipers flank, and I see the mass of flooding bodies that get into positions.

The impacts of the missiles haven't stopped. We make way through empty streets. If there have been more people hiding, they are either burrowing deeper or have gone already. The ruins of this city are big. But silver soldiers are relentless.

The more I watch, the more I see the machinery working.

Some parts of the machinery aren't even soldiers. Just chained up bodies.

They're meat. Meat shields. Basically. Make a red rebel shoot a silver, they'll be happy. Make them shoot their own, make them shoot what they proclaim to want to save. If I hadn't killed my own kind and even extended family, I may be tempted to say this is a very decent psychological weapon.

I suppose you could only make it more infecting and cruel if you stood exclusively children in the first row.

"They're flooding the tunnels," Loren notes, a crooked shadow falling over him from the wall of the much smaller ride we take.

I blink, still half bird. Eyes sliding and adjusting down. Dripping sounds overcome the silence, the eruptions and the sounds of speeding vehicles.

"Of course they flood the tunnels," I answer, more matter of fact than anything. Just to speak and be right, perhaps. We proceed without slowing down at the edges of the water taking back the underground. "The last times have proven that red rats like to hide there."

The sleek black dog is silent next to my other, far more removed Viper cousin.

I tilt my head slightly.

"Anything new?"

"One more minute," Is the answer, and his unnerving smart eyes look over the scars on my face back to the window. "There was commotion east. We are on the right trail. The dogs picked something up. But the contact on that side has been cut. We lost at least a few men."

"One more minute," Is my response, sinking into my seat, controlling my rifle. I see something else, something I didn't anticipate, but probably should have.

We have abandoned the vehicle for the last, cautious reach of the way.

The sizzling of constant updates from the other side of the buildings getting waltzed over and bending keeps me a little reassured. Magnetrons waltz below the metal and make a way. Of course.

And where there are metal benders, there's family I tend to look after.

And a family I owe for carrying me out of a hole filled with mud and not simply letting me bleed out.

The hawk soars down towards the mass of the machinery.

A moment, it blinks, not quite standing in the air but close enough, slow enough for a breath of time passing.

In the blackness of the uniforms and with a glimmer of silver hair, there's a very familiar frame.

The hawk flashes down, drifting in circles over their heads.

I lead the patrol and the escort follows me. I walk as tall as I can now.

I'm expected. All of this has happened in the heap of minutes. Like everything rushing by, it feels too far away, too long drawn out, and still too hectic.

Even if I try to stand tall, I sink into being very small next to my Samos cousin. I am forced to oogle up, and I remember how I had to leap basically to hug him.

Now, of course, we don't hug. He grazes me once, we share one boiling look.

It's good to know I am at least not the only person that turns everything into something angry in a second like this. And anger is better than fear.

"It seems I am your reinforcement again," I tell Ptolemus, holding my rifle ready for execution. This time though, I will not miss the chance to aim right and true. I won't fall into an abyss.


	2. 2: Battue

_battue_

_-the beating of woods and bushes to flush game_

_also **: **a hunt in which this procedure is used_

_The battue is a technique practiced by hunters in order to give them a clean shot at their targets. The hunters' assistants (or sometimes the hunters themselves) rap sticks against trees and bushes in order to scare animals out of the woods and into open space. It derives from the feminine past participle of the French verb _battre,_ meaning "to beat." _

* * *

_**T**_he buildings are falling towers of a lost past. They crumble under the impact, the soaring hard waves of elements ripping their foundation apart. They quiver and tremble under the force of weaponry build by human hands.

Rubble and dust whirl around us in waves, getting carried by the sheer force of tumbling structures. It kisses my brow and leaves heavy flakes on my lashes.

I'm protected by the confidence that no sharp-edged piece of metal or a projectile will ever graze my skin. Tip of the legion. Reinforcement for both my cousins. And strangely enough, I would never have it any other way. My fear and all the hateful words for war machinery blur into a blurb of nervous energy in my stomach.

_Not suited. Not accessible. Too rigid and too unstable. _

I'm on the right flank almost right behind Evangeline now. Our bodies whip between rotting excess falling, exploding and burning, stones, steel, iron and the smell of war that seeps into my pores. Black armors and dark uniforms, we bleed into the very truest definition of dark tidings.

I waltz through the ruins with six pairs of eyes. Skinwalking in the air, below our feet and running along the frontlines, my senses try to pick up signals and decipher them all the while I am still present behind the magnetrons.

When I slip into the dog, the chase blares through my body, and I surrender willingly to it. The adrenaline pumps through my veins excited, and I feel invincible a moment. Hours ago I was almost dead, buried in a swamp of mud below an arena. Now I pledge myself to hunt the perpetrators. I can smell fear radiating from the very definition of the red row of meat shields. Fear and anger, the silver swarm is not scared of anything. The dog inhales the perfume of this twisted calvacade.

The hawk glides over the tipping top of a tower, a sharp turn to the right, feathers adjusting in the aerial fight to steer clear. It lets loose a long drawn scream, but no one except me can hear it in the marching, the explosions and all the other noise of war.

Below the tower trembling, Evangeline's hand swipes away a shower of daggerlike splinters falling, out of my face, away from my scars, holding it back.

For a moment my eyes are just mine alone, and I look at her face. A small line of something angry runs along her brow like a crack running through the skeletal forms of the monstrous steel buildings. I give her a nod. Her arm swings again and with force, the metal flings and crashes into the ground, impaling the earth.

We don't talk. There is no time to say a word.

The words that get yelled throughout the devouring hunt are only commands. I don't need to command my people. Hector did the job before, and now they simply follow. Even Loren continues to follow me meekly and concentrated.

My hands around the rifle shake slightly. For a moment it feels too heavy, but I muster myself and stand straight.

_You had a promising career, Maven flattered me. A prodigy. Flawless fighter.  
_

He was right.

I am too old to falter. I won't ever. I will prove to my family and to anyone watching I am not crazy and I am capable.

The silver swarm is deadly. Creatures just as lithe as any big predator and as poisonous as all my snakes and arachnids. The force of the whole army crushing the city is below what little manpower and stolen and acquired weaponry red rebels can muster.

It is a sweep. They flooded the tunnels, they bombed the buildings, they follow through now to flush the prey out.

The few unfortunate souls that are in the way get crushed until we finally find the mark. The real trophy.

My senses, be they from any creature still on and around me or my ears themselves, pick up the signal of a shout and two words stand out. _'Lightning girl.'_

The hawk rushes along the edge of the biggest tower still crumbling and dancing in the tremors as if it was a simple grass of blade in the wind. In the eyes of a hawk and a woman, prey is prey.

As the eyes slide down and sharply, keenly, take in the running figures, I focus harshly. My bird soars over the clouds and shoots in a circle below. In the falling winds it slows again, swinging around.

Full and good view. As the static shiver from the radio promised, and the shouting, my eyes prove it right.

_There you are._

They look small from above. But I recognize the battered forms.

One girl I have lingered and lurked around on court for a while, being told off and held back like a rabid dog, plans changed to a degree that makes me ally with mind readers and boy kings.

_False silver, something else. Abominable? Maybe. Impactful? Yes.  
_

The command to open fire has not yet been given. Not yet.

I stop in the rubble beside the falling embers of once glory. A city we were made to fear with lies. No radiation. No sickness and devastation. Just a lie. And now smoked out buildings and flooded tunnels.

The group pushes on a bit. I clutch the rifle. I stand above my family. Literally.

I recognize the other face besides the miserable ragged form of the Lighning Girl. Because I had a good look at it in the heat of a fight. When I almost shot the blonde one with the red sash and the pistol at the bowl of bones, he was the one that simply threw me over the edge before disappearing. Disappearing into thin air from my grip. A trick, an ability, a jump.

The dog howls below my feet.

"Don't let him jump away!" I yell. "He'll take them all and disappear!"

The impact of my voice cracking over the alley sinks in an instant and I can see a hand sink. For the open command to fire.

He's younger than me, I realize, but older than the girl.

Age doesn't matter though. He threw me off into the abyss. I owe him a bullet.

My hands adjust around the gun.

Wait for the right moment to use it, my father told me. Oh, didn't I wait? I'll be waiting patiently through another painful shower of suffocating mud and stone breaking my bones if it means I can shoot either him or the girl.

I slip into the hawk again.

Feel the wind.

I adjust my aim, how I stand. How I breathe.

My fingers press on the trigger.

I let it loose.

With soaring force the bullet jumps and it craves to find flesh.

The command to open fire is given in the same instance as I fire, and the shot overprints the voice, almost.

In the shower of bullets, I cannot follow the perfect trajectory. I can't say which one is mine. But when one impacts into his arm, I can hope it's mine.

I want to shoot again. I don't get to. I feel robbed.

When I make a step with my rifle and aim better, take more time, another shout rings through.

Holding fire, I look over to Ptolemus, but all I see is a gurn before he shouts and we reform to the position in the new line. Loren and the rest of the Vipers scramble beside me.

Black bodies as harsh as the shard and iron.

Being surrounded is usually the ending of a hunt. It ends in a kill. In victory. It ends in a trophy.

My next shot won't be very glorious. He already bleeds. But it'll be merciful end considering what the mind readers and our prisons cells can do to you. It'll be a swift execution. More than he gave me when I landed on the stone and broke my jaw and spine.

As the whole swarm has assembled in the new line of holding the ground, I can hear the sound of something else. I am not very surprised to look over from my position beside Ptolemus shoulder and see a pale face set below a crown of molten fire.

_Of course, you wouldn't want to miss the moment you get to capture her after that blow of escaping the arena, Maven Calore. We all want our trophy.  
_

As convincing as Maven Calore has made the case of his older brother, he doesn't show the same conviction for him in this conversation. Yes, he wants him removed, gone. But not like this. Not like he wants her. My mind tries to rationalize and move through the patterns again, and I think about his hand on her arm again. I huff out a breath, quietly hiding behind Ptolemus, but he notices, his eyebrows move slightly before his dark eyes dart off again.

_Is that what this is about? And here I asked him about obsession.  
_

I turn the bird above my head to the right, and the jets have turned away from flying too dangerously close to rotating around the whole area again. The brimming engines and leaking warbling piping sounds are the only constant stirring inside my ears above the clouds.

It is quite irritating, but at least it makes me stop listening to this useless negotiation. Just another roll and attack, a barrel filling with bullets of mockery instead of metal to kill, and this whole charade of Maven Calore in a cape (a cape. And Samson calls my poetic thought processes too much) trying to convince everyone we have won this time.

We have jets. Missiles. An army. If we lose, this won't bode well at all.

My feet are getting impatient for a kill. Or at least a capture. I want my blood. The muscles in my neck tense. The bird sails low beside one alley. Fluttering wings, it lays low.

My hawk screeches and I steer it away, harshly, quickly, desperate. I can't afford to lose an asset or creature now in this crucial situation.

And I can see that there are more rats hiding nearby.

I see the scorched dirty blonde one, and anger boils in my stomach. The hawk rustles above her head above a wall made of chunks and broken bits of stone. I could sink my claws into her, but she had a gun. And I am part of a group big enough to squash her under their heel.

Suddenly, heat surrounds wings.

Utterly, violent, excruciating close heat.

Fire eats through feathers and flesh.

I scream. The hawk screams. I can barely make out the shape that burns me. It seems that I found Tiberias Calore.

The prince that made my dogs tails wag talking about treats has little semblance with the one that stares up at the dying wings of my bird. Everyone is ruined and scarred, now, visibly, and he isn't a difference.

The burning scorching pain flattens me, and I can't move my arms. I bite my lips as hard as possible to stop any more sounds.

Then the connection is broken, the hawk has died. The contact ripped. The impact shakes me back, rolls over me like another earthquake. My scars and fresh healed broken bones tremble and it makes me sick for a second.

I have to convince myself this fire isn't real. That my skin is not harmed.

I almost fall, try to grab onto my cousin for support. Instead, I stumble back ungracefully backward because I am unwilling to let go of my gun. Loren catches my back, arms steady, face pale.

He takes the impact of my sharp elbow hitting him in the gut without a word.

I want to yell again, another warning, but the pain of burning alive sinks into my nerves.

The next thing I know, I can't yell anything, not even speak.

With a cackling of lightning flung from a girl into the sky, a jet dies and falls like a meteor.

Everyone moves fast. With force, I take a leap. This time, neither Evangeline or Ptolemus try to shield me from the shards raining down the side of the alley.

My sight goes black a second. I still feel the impact of the fire. A missile crashes inside the turn of the alley across the plastered ground and fallen tower.

Grey-haired frames on the other side of the alley, maybe fifty paces away. I close up again, seizing control of the black dog wandering forward me.

The smell of war so close.

The corpses piling again.

My Samos cousins are relatively unharmed in the distance. I can't say the same for Hector's son and the other Viper in my entourage.

Hector's son looks ragged and one arm dangles unnaturally from his socket. Loren is bleeding from his gut, blood leaking out.

Another Viper lost, half a face unrecognizable, and more flames and more missiles. Some impact has killed and ripped him apart.

I glare. Forget how my lungs function.

_This happens all the time. _

I don't have time to close his eyes or speak a farewell. This is war. And just the same as his eyes are glassy and dead, mine are still alive.

I have lost the rifle. But I can simply take one out of the hands of a dead silver soldier next to me.

"Get Loren back. I don't risk any more of you dying," I hiss.

No one objects.

When I scramble back on, the line that has held our side has washed away into the second chase of this day.

The dog and I form a rope of smells again and join in.

Or we would. If there wasn't a wall of flames shooting up.


	3. 3: Recede

_recede_

_-to move back or away__: withdraw_**  
**

_\- to slant backward_

_-to grow less or smaller__: diminish, decrease_**  
**

* * *

**_T_**he wall flickers and licks over the ground higher than I stand, a heat that makes me relive the moment the hawk fell from the sky.

A second I stop harshly. Boots scrunching, I dig my heels deep into the ground. It gets softer and more sandy the closer everything runs, flees, chases or follows to the water. The dog barks low.

Behind me, everyone moves fast. The fire is a trick we should have used to cut them off. The heat ignites my scars with a tickle.

But I am not scared of fire.

My anger seeps through my freshly healed wounds, the scars I chose to carry, another badge to show off, to show the world I don't care about their beauty, to show the world you don't kill me, you don't smother me.

It evaporates at the wall of flames like the water some Osanos throws and hurls around behind me, joining the fray. To stop the fire and guarantee the push.

Because they are lucky. But they shouldn't be able to escape. If they do-

The dog's senses are my warning. The black ears drop, and the black, sleek body cowers back, even though we are still roped together and don't fear the fire. A dog's ears can pick up things better than anything else. And just as my pack has picked up uneasy on the lightning in the arena, when the other noise was a mere coincidence before, now the electricity makes us drop.

I don't share the warning with the nymph.

With a dazzling, frizzled smell, the wild found energy comes out of nowhere, again, impossible and angering me, and it finds at least one of them. The smell is horrible. I can pick all the segments up through the dog's rapid moving nose. The burned hair. The cracked skin.

Fire and Lightning.

_What is my gun supposed to do against THAT? _

Again.

My life is built on the maxim that someone will always be stronger than me.

I remember that as a woman always having to crane her neck up even when wearing heels.

I remember that because I am the only daughter from the Viper brother that didn't get the titles.

I remember the day I sat in a grey block of stone and concrete, with two beautiful girls gossiping. I remember the day in the arena like some blurry dissociation, cheering for misfortune, small satisfactions to see Samson getting mauled and throw into a wall.

At that time, I had nothing. Now I am supposed to have won some.

I owe bullets to the rebels for my scars and the dead animal has to be repaid as well.

And I am the only Viper left standing. The others have either retreated or died.

I don't feel anything but the acid that bubbles in my veins now. It throws gashes through my composure, and I shake heavy. Fire gleams on the black rifle.

More water, a second of free sight. I take a weak shot now. Another thundering noise.

The dog snarls when we duck again and wait for the rest of the spear to sail over the flames and pierce right into a heart.

I take a breath fueled by my angry trashing heart, taking half cover, away as good as I can from the flames. It is easy because the flames move. The wall isn't static. They move.

And the formation is standing but shaky with the current state of attacks and the surprise before. We duck and watch as the meager group retreats.

Retreat. What a disappointment.

This is not the complete flushing of helpless prey anymore. Now we chase fighting, retreating bodies.

I look back. Everything is anger around me.

My sight blurs a second. Palms sweaty, I sink my hands on the ground.

I can't control the bodies of humans. I can't tell the soil to sprout lashing vines. But something always lives under the ground, anywhere close, if anything, creatures must be crawling or at least alive. If something has survived the missiles and the trampling feet, it is mine now.

Some sort of tiny organism, smaller than my fingernail. I grab one, two, a group, concentrating.

The vibrations that quiver through me are making me nauseous. There is only the river to retreat to, close by, sweeping behind dead alleyways. Why would they retreat to the water - river or ocean- when we have proven to flood the tunnels and they have a burner?

I wish I still had my hawk. If there were birds in the city of ruins, they have fled when the jets arrived.

I sit motionless on the ground, hands still clawing into the dirt when the others catch up.

First in row is Maven Calore.

For a second, his blue eyes look at me, the howling, huffing dog curled around me, my hands on the earth, as I kneel. At least someone kneels before our new king today. Surely not what he had in mind when we followed the rebels to this place.

He looks surer to get them than this feels.

It was supposed to be a complete victory in the Bowl of Bones.

It was supposed to be easy, complete destruction.

They still run.

The dog and the bugs don't share the tactical sentiments. They just want to drive them farther until they can be caught and broken. For them, a win would be a win.

And perhaps they are right. Perhaps this will make it all sweeter.

I weight the way we arch our backs and sit or stand, the chaos around us. This isn't just a boy putting a spider in my jacket, talking to it at the late-night anymore. But I knew that. It isn't just the crown on the dark hair or that cape. He was an interesting partner for negotiation, and he convinced me with his nice winding words. It is his mother I fear the most. Even with Samson in my pocket for now.

"Towards the river," I say, which is probably needless, but at least a confirmation. I don't yell warnings anymore. The organisms scatter along behind the heat separating us.

He doesn't have a word for me. Just one more look.

His cape bashes through the air with every step. And when he brushes past me, the edge hits me in the face. Some bit of metal fastened to it misses my eye and slaps my cheek. I blink. Luckily, there is no time for a remark.

His mouth curls up low. I only grit my teeth before getting up.

If he wasn't king now and this wasn't against protocol as well as just the fact he has made me an accomplice early on, I would punch him in the throat as I did with Calpurnia the next time I get a private glimpse.

As it is I roll into the shaky formation before me, taking a space right behind Ptolemus black armored back, which seems to be my new favorite hiding spot as of late.

* * *

We lose the Lightning Girl, the traitor prince and all of the surviving Scarlet Guard and conspirators that can escape.

No one will take a trophy home.

As it turns out, the river holds some kind of secret. It made for a safe retreat because they have the means to escape there. At first, it is puzzling, with no trace over water left.

Frames disappearing, flames dying. Only one armored, now capeless boy-king is left at the edge of a dead-end.

We run and search the streets, the pack sniffs. Metal gets rolled around and trashed, buildings even more destroyed into nothingness. But it is too late to find them. At least now. For me. From land. My fingertips in the murky water at the riverbed, below the roads, I attract the smallest school of black-skinned, fast fishes. They drift around the small pace of river I can guide them, but nothing of substance comes out of it. All I know is how deep the water goes down and how it flows.

Other resources will have to be funneled.

The Vipers return to me. At least Hector does, for some whispered words about the position, about what has happened on the other side of the flank. While I listen to him giving me the names of the dead, I glare over.

Maven Calore is pale in the grey light, and people shout commands further down the row.

For a second, he only takes one pale, long breath. The way he moves and twitches for only a second reminds me of the unfortunate alliance with the whispers. Then he's reassembled again.

If I hadn't thought we were angry before, we are now. Because silver elite doesn't appreciate to be bested. When you strive for excellence and total victories, you can't afford to lose.

As I have already thought- loosing to a red bunch and the other condemned doesn't bode well.

This has put a damper on plans.

When the whole army retreats from Naercy, we leave nothing behind.

My transport is filled with hurt family. They are half in thought, half venom dripping from fangs after losing a loved one.

Loren has been treated but he is not conscious, weakly moving in the seat. It's both Hector, and Hadrien, his son right and he left from me.

"People will be insufferable the next days," I say.

"It could have been worse," Hadrien Viper says, more pragmatic. He leans forward, taller than me, by a head, but not as soft and smug-faced as Loren. Not as handsome, some idiots might say. A birthmark lingers under his right eye, a dotted point brushed by dirt and eyelashes as he blinks at me in some expectation. "There was some unpleasant surprise, that is all."

"Could it have gone wrong?" Hector asks from the other side. "We lost three. For nothing. Not to speak about others. The jet, the dead from the explosions, the lightning-"

I scoff softly.

"You did the right thing when you told us to retreat," Hadrien offers and gives the black dog at his feet a gentle pat on the head as it curls together, black fur glistening with ashes and dust. "I am positive no one can blame Lady Viper or us."

"If anyone wants to blame you," I say out of the experience being on both ends. "They will."

I have no safe words to reassure them. I will have to leave that to my father.

* * *

I don't return to my home. Instead, I meet up with my father in Whitefire.

His hand carefully rubs my arm, ringed fingers with wrinkles on stained black fabric.

Words have left my body in the ruins of the city. Crumbled as the stone, I wade through talks and listen. The light is grey and dim, but Whitefire always blares white light over the night sky.

Archeon suddenly doesn't feel safe anymore for me. I think about the ruins of Naercy and wonder if someday, Archeon will crumble the same. It is a horrifying thought.

I catch a second with Ptolemus in a hallway, walking.

"I saved you, Evie saved me in the bowl," I whisper. My hand tries to adjust my hair desperately. It curls from the knot into my neck. "Are we even now? Does that mean you trust me?"

He shouldn't trust me. We both know that.

It shows in his face. His dark eyes are hard. They try to see through me and my intentions, of the things he knows about me, about the armor that protects him, and the shield I don't possess when I can't hide behind him these last days. We both weigh our past, our knowledge, our pride.

I swallow hard, throat moving visibly.

It's strange to think I was taller than him and his sister once upon a time. It's strange to think I held lectures about family. It's strange to think we have been strangers in the last years.

The strangest thing now, just like that hug, is the way he looks down at me. I must be a miserable sight.

"Go home, I need you tomorrow," he says just as low. We both have lost an edge in this dark grey light and sickly weak rising morning. "Dali."

Something in my ribcage breaks, my lungs swell up and I feel weak.

"I promised not to disappoint again," I answer.


	4. 4: Offense

_offense_

_-something that outrages the moral or physical senses_

_-the act of displeasing or affronting _  
_also: the state of being insulted or morally outraged_

_-obsolete __**: **__an act of stumbling_

* * *

**_I_** feel wrong. Raw inside my skin, my feelings are more imbalanced than ever. My self is torn between dizzy tiredness and being wide awake again.

I enter the foyer with broken fresh scars and smelling like saltwater, sweat, and smoke. It isn't a new mixture and not the worst I have smelled the last days alone.

The lights are weak inside the house. Shapes that blurry resemble the familiar interior delineate along my vision.

I expected the dogs lounging around. But since my father is nowhere to be seen as well, they are either running happily along his legs or someone has put them behind a closed door. One of them is still recovering. The fact that the creature is wounded and limping while I broke all of my bones just to be pieced together by a Skonos in very little time is unfair. Again, I wish an animos could simply cure wounds on their creatures. It would have helped me in the city of ruins.

That hawk was worth something. Wasted asset. And dying painful, nonetheless.

My boots are too loud on the wood. Even the animals all breathe low tonight. Only the slightest sounds from a nocturnal bird penetrating the floorboards from above. It dies as fast as it rings up.

Ears cautious, I take in the silence- At least no music from below or voices from the salon. My mother must be busy sleeping or putting horns on my poor father again where all my family can hear and notice.

The pipes rumble low, water rushes. Bathrooms are occupied, everyone just wants to wash the dirt off.

A small trail of that dirt lies over the hallway leading to the quarters of my fellow brethren. I know it'll be gone fast, swiped off by the almost invisible hands of red servants cowering in the corners like ghosts.

For a second I think about a boy barely fifteen with gentle hands and big eyes. Cleaning a glass cage for a spider, and something in my stomach clenches a little. It feels like the stinger of a wasp pricks my skin tonight, unwelcome, and the feelings that make me weak rise and fall just like the running force of the army before.

I could easily find out how he is doing. But do I want to? It is surprising enough he hasn't been taken as some threat or leverage or simply been killed. Maybe it is simply because someone like my butcher husband or a Queen wouldn't waste time on lowly red blood. No one else knows he cared for me and my creatures when he shouldn't have, except for my father.

To my surprise, I don't find Battle Scar on my bed. A small portion of the silken blanket and bedsheet are crinkled and rumpled. Just like a huge dog would leave it jumping down after lying on it rolled together.

I find my despicable husband again, wide awake, with eyes sharp and bright enough to cut through my skin like the stone in the Bowl. He has been busy with some paper in his thin hands, a small cone of light from the lonesome lamp standing vigil below the half-closed blinds leading out to look over the city.

Nothing in the unkempt memory of this room has changed since I have left it this morning. The shelves and wardrobe filled with some of my clothes and bare belongings. The soft screen, the mirror standing at one side.

I feel a million days have passed. At least my scars tell me that with a tingle.

"Did my mother invite you in again or did you just stay here while the whole legion smoked out a city?"

"I had my own matters to attend to while you played good soldier," he says, and his eyes leave the letters on the paper and rake over the scars in my face.

That makes me uncomfortable. It is that way he always looks at me when I am ruined and battered with dirt and blood. The rubber band snapping back in our connection told me about the unwilling acknowledgment of beauty before.

He always bugs me most when I come from some hunt or trip, and his hands and eyes never leave me alone then. Like he wants to make sure I am still intact enough to be a worthy possession. Or maybe he just savors my pain in bruises like a fine wine sample. Like that moth in the jar.

_I asked myself before how predators mate, didn't I?_

I am not in the mood to think about it too long. The way we dance around each other has become pathologic patterns since we married. I can decipher them well enough to use them. Even without wondering about his attractions again.

"This was a disastrous incident, "I explain and start to peel myself out of the boots. He won't leave. I might as well contest my own space again.

The dirty shoes fly ungraceful past his chair. He blinks once, fingers twitching around the paper.

"Can you imagine how it'll be in the morning when everyone is fresh back on and makes more demands?"

He studies the curve of my throat with some lax interest when I take off the black scaled armor and uniform jacket, two more layers of shirts thinly and flatly crumbled on my skin. "I don't completely disagree. But I also don't agree."

"You know something," I inquire, pulling the remaining needles of my scalp, brushing through my miserable hair with my fingers. I should have given up on fixing it earlier. Now knots have tangled even worse inside. "What have you done again tonight?"

I don't receive an immediate answer, so I only lean forward.

"Some errands, some thoughts to untangle. There is more to ruling a country than simply marching somewhere with the forces. You need well-strung machinery. Some wouldn't work. So they needed a reminder."

He looks at his papers again, sitting lowly beside my bed.

That reminds me of another sighting before we left for Naercy and I can't stop myself from speaking this time.

"Never sit in a chair that's for me and my father again," I warn him. Even if he doesn't deserve the warning. "Or I will cut you to tiny pieces."

He puts the paper down very slow, folding them. I can see the words sprawling along the corner. More numbers. Something about finances again? No. It's dates this time.

What is it with this man and his interest in numbers when he is all but a better executioner for his family?

"I sit wherever I want," he informs me cooly. "Especially if it's part of a deal. This house could as well be mine."

I want to push my fist into his face. My heart sputters in rage again.

"My house will never be yours," I promise, teeth gritted._ I will rather burn it all down._ "You are no Viper. And the deal works both ways. Without me and my father you wouldn't even be staying as a guest."

"Tell that to your mother and her Tyros and Arven's."

_Who did she bring along now again?_

It is about time someone ends this. But my father would never. She has wrapped him tightly around her finger. Perhaps I should slip Hector or Hadrien a command to get rid of her. Now that we are all here together, they seem the most reasonable in the chain of commands. Especially after tonight.

"Perhaps I should ask her what room has the best view to stay in, next time she tells me all about your marriage and secrets and family relations," he continues to poke, and for a second, he lingers inside my skull too, only to know how much any thought wasted on Dayne Tyros and the way she lives irritates me.

The air between us is poisoned miasma, radiation that goes right through our linked heads.

"You are just a second rate cousin without my father or Elara." I lift my head high and channel as much superiority as I can. "We have an agreement. We work together now. But let's face it. While we are at it to insult each other again."

We are both second rate cousins. But I got my promotions now. My enemies are dead or on the run. My cousins are looking at me again. My family has to pay respects to me. His part in it is undeniable. But it is still my name that stands. Not his. I enjoy rubbing salt in the wound of shortcomings. Without a doubt, he thought after the coup he would immediately be raised on some podest.

I only aim to hurt. I unload all my frustration now. All my missed shots. All my anger about losing assets. All my anxiety.

"You are just a better murderer and henchman. You do the dirty work and no one will ever show you gratitude, _butcher._"

Something glitters inside his sharp face, angry. Like broken glass shards and the hazardous falling buildings, I witnessed today.

This will turn into a fight again. I have shot two different guns today and I have killed and injured people. My taste for blood is still awake.

"You are not the crown of creation, Samson, trust me, I know a deal about evolution and even with all your predatory tendencies, someone like you will never make it alone because-"

I don't get to speak until the end of that sentence. I choke on my breath in horror, and my body locks into paralysis. We've been here before. My heartbeat trashes again. He looks at the window with blue eyes considering and calculating something, while the anger still fluctuates between us. I struggle against the strings. Hopeless as always.

_I could just make you jump, _his voice claws inside my head_. Never forget it._

My muscles relax. I slump forward with the sudden release.

He puts the papers inside his pocket. Slowly stands up. His hair looks bright white in the small cone. "Our agreement is not a deal between two equal, Daliah. You are my wife. But don't overestimate yourself. I still would love to choke the life out of you."

_You work for me and I keep myself from breaking you. And you keep your tongue. Or someone might cut it. It has happened before. _

Something in me freezes at that notion, locking in place just like my body a moment before.

If my misfortune means anything, if it ever meant something out of the stone skinned dead that plaster my way, I concentrate it again on his back leaving.

* * *

I spend awfully short hours asleep again. I force myself to make my breathing even, lie as still as possible. The paranoia and the pain, the weakness that blooms inside me when I think about my cousin calling me by my old nickname, all that isn't helping to make me relax.

That is my lullaby alone without the dogs as a blanket.

_I can't disappoint. I can never again disappoint- what is the next step-_

The dining room is filled with green dressed, slow-moving bodies in the early morning hours.

No trace of my husband. No trace of my mother. No invader. This perhaps explains the silence at the long table adorned with porcelain and glass, steaming and overladen with food.

Loren hides in one corner, fork stabbing into something that may have been an egg once but now is only small, massacred particles. His face is as always strangely pretty. It is symmetric in its thin form and long-lashed eyes. But that pretty face doesn't help and it means nothing. It has been smashed before, as the slightly crook in the nose proves. And the eyes are rimmed with grey, bags hanging under them heavy. Otherwise, he at least looks unharmed. He wears some formless grey and black. If he hadn't begged me and spent the last days in close proximity, it would be still hard to believe he is the same person that mocked me all my life. I feel a slight indifference and annoyance looking at him.

Beside some stack of papers and a plate filled with sausages, Hadrien has taken position. He doesn't stab his food. He reads low, some glasses stuck on his nose. From time to time, a wagging tail appears below his chair, and his other hand takes one sausage off silently and throws it down to where one sleek black and two grey flecked big dogs lurk. I see their greedy, slobbering heads peak up. Strange seeing someone else but me spoiling them. Almost a shame we never had the chance to get to knkw more than the others face. I could have used him years ago.

Hector just silently sips on a glass, looking at the big screen flickering in front of the table.

"Good morning," he says low.

"Vipers," I answer. The dogs jump at my voice and leave the treats behind for now. I greet them with my hands rubbing over their backs. "What is the news?"

"Plenty. Your father is already gone to Whitefire. You are expected as well. We were just watching a broadcast."

I look at the familiar sharp cut face and dark hair under a crown, a pair of blue eyes. And the blond frame in the distance, barely holding in the background, reminding me of late night talks with her henchman the butcher, and I freeze again a moment before the usual animosity sulks through me.

"Very well," I sit down at the head of the table. I can't afford to stumble. The dogs curl around my legs like a shield.


	5. 5: Posture

_posture_

_-to cause to assume a given posture_

_-to assume an artificial or pretended attitude_

* * *

**_T_**he bad feeling continues to creep over my back when I finish my meager breakfast. I was never a particularly strong eater.

Add the fact I have had the most unpleasant company the last month.

Add the stomach illness when I get scared and uncertain. Or disgusted.

I force myself now to chew and swallow.

I need to be strong and healthy to lead. I need food to work. I need food to keep being functional. That is the only reason I slowly move fork and knife today. When I cut an egg Loren hasn't yet gotten to evaporate, the metal scrapes over the porcelain with a heavy shriek.

I promised Ptolemus I wouldn't disappoint.

_Dali._

At the memory something heavy accompanies the food sliding down my throat. The dogs at my feet are still hiding and hoping for scraps. Hadrien is already finished and moves somewhere through the house.

One Ear whines low. Runt has coiled together at my feet, but she growls, silvery fur bristling a second. I reach down and pat each of them again reassuring, I hear a tail hitting wood with some wagging force. At least One Ear lets himself be assured. Runt stays a little less friendly at my side, ears pulled back and nose flicking up and down.

It's my own uneasiness transcribing to the animals.

The emotional rawness makes me angry and irritated. I want to lash out at the world as always. But with even more force than usual.

I try to ignore it. Heels clicking, spiders with thin brown legs sitting over my brow, I leave Viper mansion with the dogs, Loren and Hector in tow.

While we walk over the steps to Whitefire, Hector keeps a little in the back after briefing me. I throw down a few looks as we take stairs made of bright stone, but this man has proven at least to be loyal to chains of commands. And besides, Loren is paranoid and twitchy for both of us towards him. If I were Loren, I wouldn't trust anyone too. It is still funny how he hides behind me now, like some child to be protected, after treating me with no respect all my life.

Runt growls again low, chaps drawn back. Her slim body is pressed to my side by now. Her grey sprinkled, sharp cut ears lie flat on her head when she keeps the moving bodies around us in her sight and smell.

Loren chooses a very inappropriate moment to lean over.

"I never got to report," he whispers, and his closeness, especially in my raging state of pain and annoyance, makes my mood even worse. "On the day when you spread in the tunnels, you send me to set someone on-"

"Not here, not now."

"Right," he moves back, lowering his voice and eyes even further.

Runt barks once.

A few figures on the hallway turn around.

When they see the entourage of Vipers and dogs, most decide not to waste anymore looks. And none of mine or their time. I notice two white-dressed shapes that continue to stare. One is a girl, younger than me, clearly Arven, with green eyes that snap at me and the dogs, body slightly leaning into our direction in something like interest. She stares after us without concealing that. The other Arven is the one that usually acts like he can walk in and out of my home. Like he is married to my mother.

I don't have words for them. I only lift my head as high as Loren lowers his and move on.

I can't simply throw the door to the council rooms open, as much as I'd love that. Being proud is one thing. Being reckless or stupid in the pride another.

_ Imagine I would act like I own Whitefire. I am no Samson, luckily._

My blood boils a moment, remembering how we clashed last night. With another long breath, I shake it off.

I don't have to throw any door open. The seating around the smooth, sleek table with the outlines of a map etched inside is slowly filling again. I leave the dogs with Loren.

Some members of various families already sit, and as always you can guess by the seating who stands where in the hierarchy.

From the left side of the table, the meager rest that is left of Macanthos under their new prone and less proficient lead watches me and my father with the same snapping interest as the Arven girl with the green eyes did. I pull my lips back as Runt has done, for the shortest moment when our eyes meet. I don't have dagger for teeth, but it works well enough. He looks away first. Osanos, having lost quite the people to the lightning girl, be it in the chasm that swallowed me or the attack on the ruins, has one twitching eye.

Then there's also silent, dark skinned Iral. I recognize the face from watching it shout in the night of the shots and the ball. Samson kept an eye on him through my wasps. Salin Iral looks less offended than Macanthos, at least. If he knew I was involved in getting Ara removed, I am sure that would change.

Gliacon, Eagrie and Laris are keeping in the back, some passing exchange that dies soon enough again. Eagrie probably sees easily what will happen soon, and since the eyes are half relaxed on their seats, I take it as a sign that I can simply step forward.

Provos starts the round to the right side of the oval table, leaning on it, a golden cufflink blinking in the light.

My father has one hand on his brow, besides the golden glimmers he looks plain with his sigils. His only ring, the green one, fingers meticulously sweep over his forehead and the lines etched inside them. The grey in his dark hair is like my spider's strings.

Next to him, Volo Samos seems less tired and worried, leaning back in his seat. At least he doesn't show it behind his well-groomed beard and lips pressed together. But that is just as it always is.

My cousin is there too, arms crossed, face closed.

His black eyes drill past me towards Loren sneaking off with the dogs, in something like dislike, maybe. He isn't worth getting upset about. Ptolemus never really cared for Loren or Atara, I believe. And why would he? They didn't care for him above the needed interactions.

"Pardon my late arrival," I force my face into a smile that should be courteous.

I bow forward and act humbled. The brown, thin spider on my head swipes one long leg over my temple. For Ptolemus, I have another nod. I get a small one back.

"Still on time," My father greets. "Take your seat. Have you had some updates?"

"I had a briefing on the way. Hector made sure." Glad to sit down, I smooth over my jacket as I do.

Last night, the talks went over searching the perimeter. They went over the potential danger that clearly exists. Naercy wasn't a success. Without a price, the masses cannot be soothed, and the wounds the red rebels have clawed inside our ranks are wide open.

We all search for balance. For some that means clinging to their anger, for some, it is confusing, for some it simply means seizing control.

I cross my arms in front of my stomach. Once or twice I can feel Iral's eyes on the spider that lurks over my hair like a jeweled pin, moving down over me.

I don't have many words for all the ears on this table.

A thing that stays the same since the beginning of my observation of royalty. They let others wait.

It takes more than ten minutes of quiet conversation that I barely participate in, and we all brew more or less like a foreboding, silver storm.

Then finally, another caravan of guards and scattered sentinels, and our new king has arrived. First day of his reign, he knows the drill.

The bodies beside me shift. And I can taste something in the air changes along with the arrival of Maven Calore. Another cape. At least it doesn't smash me in the face today.

My eyes only slowly swipe over him, the dark and crimson colors piercing through the bright light, and then I look back over to Elara Merandus.

She still wears black. No veil today. But she doesn't give me one look out of blue glass eyes. I didn't expect any recognition.

We are not affiliated in any open sense, after all.

We never talk in the open. We never interacted. I am very, very fine with this.

The spider creeps slowly over my ear and cheek.

It's a long discussion that turns hazy and angry fast. It continues even after both the Queen and her son have already departed, leaving the same regard of demands and commands as before.

In my current mental state, inviting me to a fight and expecting me not to join in is a bad guess.

Especially not, when accusations get flung around.

"As before in the investigations," my father tries to soothe at some point. "And I can surely speak for my daughter as well as anyone else associated with my house and resources. We give our best. No one has been able to make out where any of the remaining rebels have went to hiding the last ten hours."

"Your best was never worth that much," Osanos mutters.

The air stands stale in the room. Volo simply watches us all bite at each other for now. At least for a moment. Ptolemus eyebrow twitches. Provos hides his mouth behind his hand, ring shining on his thumb.

I hiss. Curl my hands to fists on the table. "What did you just say?"

"No reason to get personal, Osanos," My father grips my shoulder. "I know you preferred to handle my brother. But he is dead."

"What an unfortunate incident that was," Salin Iral notes smoothly.

My father disregards that. Only his hand closes tighter around my shoulder.

"He is not the only head gone," I grit my teeth. I shouldn't. But I am ready for a fight.

Outside the door, the dogs bark and growl loudly. I see my cousin shift forward, and we both get ready to claw and bite, yell or hiss. It is almost anodyne to know.

"That's enough!" Volo finally ends this dispute, voice barely raised but still very clearly heard through the whole room.

I look away, eyes focusing on the dots pointing to all the cities and borders inside the map.

It will never be enough, for anyone. The silver swarm is hungry. The lords and ladies want their food. Their fame. Their retribution. We all have that in common, at least.

A while after my stopped outburst, I finally catch a break without people willing to fling accusations around.

I leave my father to the rest of the talking. If only because my self-control has its limits and the cramps keep unnerving me. The angry lords and ladies have split. I can still feel Iral watching. But Osanos has ushered off after being shut down.

My cousin looks over my head instead of my face now. The muscles in his jaw move. Ptolemus has his own problems and dealings.

Still, when I move two steps away his hand holds me back on my arm. Strangely it feels similar to my father's encapsulated touch. It isn't the malicious taint I receive when my husband touches me. And it isn't the ghost of something I dislike. It is, for the lack of a better word, just there, and I strangely missed it, with an unwelcome tug at my insides again.

"I need to check something," I mutter up to him, despite the breaking hight of my heels. "Just personal. Nothing important."

His grip vanishes with a push. He turns his body away and his face is still hard.

"Don't take too long. No one likes having you around."

An unnecessary expense of words. I still take them gladly. Do I hate being emotional.

"Except for you, of course."

I don't receive an answer.

That concludes to me excusing myself.

There is still Loren and the dogs. Unsurprisingly it is One Ear sniffing after me in the big bright complex.

From my vantage point I can look over the square again. Over the city. And I wonder again. About decay that makes an enormous city a ruin.

The brown, hairless, thin spider crawls over my sleeve.

It sits on my fingers. Tickles me slowly. So small, in contrast to the leaping spiders. Causing harm in small doses, if it decides to bite. I watch it walk and climb over my skin.

My father always wears that ring since the day he married my mother. I don't wear a ring. I still need no jewelry to remind myself I can't escape the clutches of Samson if he really wants to take me in on his promise of control and dread.

You work for me, he said. A typical assumption from someone as deeply proud and twisted.

Maybe I need to stop at the Viper Pit tonight after I return. Maybe the small bites need to get swapped to something truly terrifying.

"Quick. What was it you found?" I ask, eyes watching how the small frames beneath us work relentlessly on rebuilding the city. On removing stains. Rubble. Swipe away the shameful reminders of a night gone in death and flames. And swipe away even more.

He's too close. But right now, as One Ear sniffs and I keep him in check of the corridor, we're alone.

"You said I should put Sentinel Viper on the watch. I did. I also put someone else on the watch for _her son _that day. I did it afterward too. Since I couldn't tell you."

My hand waves once. With his narrow eyes looking around, his hands form a protective cone and mutter words in my ear. And despite the cramps and the days passed since the chase through the tunnel, this is good. Loren has done something right for once.

It isn't the most new or delicate information. But it helps to fill patterns. To confirm them. To maybe get a hold of what makes people tick.

I smile for the rest of my walk back. My jaw hurts from it.

My path crosses with Evangeline. But a familiar red-haired girl also is around. So I keep it brief.

Avoiding Elane Haven. I haven't spoken to her since the sun shooting. I may need to still thank her.

* * *

Later, at night, I haven't found an opportunity to use my new gained knowledge and confirmed theories about either Elara or Maven. I wouldn't want to catch the whisper queen alone in a night like this. Archeon and Norta still stand. But it doesn't mean that the people inside can't be exchanged and removed as before. The lords and ladies want blood.

They have to know that as well.

The spider is still trapped in the glass. It still has no way to escape the tightly closed lid. But it has air. And the current, lazy state that it rests in makes it clear it doesn't have the need to hunt for a meal. It has been fed.

Disoriented, the spider legs take a few steps back and forth.

Unhurt and trapped, the eyes focus on any movement. Any source of life. And any source of light in the darkness.

It takes a moment. But in the dim cones of light moves a shadow. It becomes the silhouette of more a boy than a man, eaten by molten darkness pouring all around.

The hairs on the spider shine dark as it stretches one leg. It tries to hear for me. To dissect and note the sounds.

But beyond the small space, the confined prison of glass, there is too little sounds. Only dim they reach my mind on the other side. And none has value.

But then, the hair does start to pick up changes. The circulation of fresh, moving air.

The shaking, vibrating lift of a breeze as the lid gets taken off.

The slow breathing of a living being leaning forward.

The spider watches a hand stretch into the glass. It knows this hand. This hand has fed it.

Still, it shuffles back a step.

The hand remains outstretched. Clean nails, pale, holding the palm outstretched.

"I know you watch me right now."

It is the wisp of a voice. The spider hears it now loud and clear though.

"It takes a while to see a difference," Maven continues. "But you move and shift the creatures more than they need to. If they're agitated, you are either close or even watching."

The hand remains outstretched.

"My mother wouldn't be pleased with me right now to see us talking like this. I find it not too bad to hold something physical as proof you are indeed listening."

With an almost disgruntled quiver, the creature moves up his fingers on its eight legs.

Maven holds the spider careful on his palm as he moves back through the darkness. The hairy brown body shakes sideways a bit as he does so, but stays very still now, otherwise.

"We haven't had a chance for a while. But it seems you can't sleep as well."

I don't want to tell him about my dreams. Or the fact I don't get half as much sleep as I would need. Or that my stomach feels like someone sucker punched me. Being inside the spider as distraction helps.

"It is a shame you can't give me elaborate answers."

_As if I would want that for most the things you ask._

If a spider could shrug, it probably would now glare. Instead, it ever so slowly rubs its first pair of legs together.

His eyes are far away for Daliah Viper watching intently. Trying to decipher what he is thinking. "I asked you about love. I still don't know why. Maybe it was curiosity."

The spider taps on his palm to signal that I remember.

"I realize I couldn't have chosen a less unfamiliar topic for you. But as a spider and as a woman, you do know about prey and enemies."

The legs stop touching each other. The spider takes in Maven Calore with lax interest and one set of eyes.

He seems colorless right now. Not a threat. Even though the spider can sense and hear the metal on his wrist that could ignite a spark.

"Let's discuss our further arrangement soon, Lady Viper. Just between us. Unless," his voice trails off. One finger softly touches the spider. "You wish to talk to my mother again about it. Or want me to use Samson to bring you further details."

Now the body in his hand rattles with warning, threatening gestures of the legs and pulls up slow.

"Good," Maven nods before his eyes take in the form cupped in both his hands now. "I didn't think you would want that. Not here. But if you find your way home, I'm very sure there is something waiting for you. Play nice with your cousins. I will need you all pretty soon. The better your relationship, the less you have to worry about anyone questioning your beliefs, I would suppose."

He doesn't have to tell me that. And the fact that he underestimates me and what I think about him. That fact warms my stomach almost as good as a bug devoured by a spider.


	6. 6: Sharpen

_sharpen_

_-to make or become sharp or sharper, Hone  
_

_\- (Music, other) music to raise the pitch of (a note), esp by one chromatic semitone_

* * *

**_A_**t the end of this day, the first day since we all strangely found ourselves back in a daze of demands, I find the mansion bathed in music and sounds of light chattering.

It clashes.

The cracking music and violin soars through the walls and makes some of the animals skitterish. At every high note, some of the birds answer or croak, and some of my bugs surely scatter around their homes as well.

The night, as it seems, has split the mansion invisibly into two halves, both having their own little carousing.

One is clearly occupying the salon.

I don't dare to move past it. The last time I had to sit inside was when my mother spilled secrets to Samson. I don't need that again. But there are at least three voices this time. One is definitely just Arven. The other is my mother. The third is younger. Not quite as featherbrained in laughter as my mother.

Arven and the girl come to my mind, in the hallway. The thought makes my eyebrows involuntary draw together.

A cousin, maybe? A niece? They lost some in the bowl and after too. She wasn't here for Queenstrial, she probably has lower blood and status in their family ranks. It makes sense I don't know any wayward Arven from a province.

What do I care about it, even?

With a long puffed out breath full of disdain, I move up the stairs. At least the second gathering isn't quite as unnerving.

It is just as I know it, the council of pettiness. They have chosen to fill my father's study again. This time, it isn't about any vote though. Smoke fills the air and escapes from the window. Curious. Which one of them smokes? I don't think I have ever seen my father smoke. Maybe just an occasional thing.

A few chairs fill the space between the desk and the shelves. The bird isn't in the cage. But the dogs have rolled together on their cushions. No music, just voices and the sounds of the animals croaking through the house up here. I can ignore the flurry of notes echoing up.

Hector and my father do as well.

They are just sipping on their glasses filled with brown sharp liquor, whiskey maybe.

"We are all early today," I note.

"For once," Hector answers, and my father makes an amused, but tired sound."There have been further instructions delivered to all of us. And everyone is busy. Maven Calore is king for two days and has started to announce construction sites and bargains for capturing the rebels."

"You have to sweeten a deal from time to time to make it look appealing, even if it is just for show," My father says, very quietly, and we all are dragged back involuntarily to the reminder that no one in this room had any sort of position before the month of horrors dragged the mighty and steady down.

And at that, my father and I exchange a long look.

For a moment, the silence is unpleasant as it settles. Then my mother's piercing, high pitched laugh penetrates the wall.

"Do you think anyone will go through with it? Just deliver them, especially the former prince? Just to hope to better their situation?"

"I can't judge anyone's resolve on the matter. Maybe they will, maybe they won't. Either way, we have a troublesome time ahead."

I hum low, unharmonic, but in agreement.

Hector sips slowly from the sideline, keeping himself safe. He doesn't sound malicious or even petty, just bleak, a matter of fact answer. "Which is why we need you both as stable as possible."

"I agree. Everyone is frustrated," My father placates, looking at me. For a moment, he reminds me of nights long past, when "I don't blame them. They fought on the Square we build in front of our palace, they escaped and ruined a public execution. The attack and bombardment on Naercy were...unsatisfying. They slipped through the hands of a whole army now. If the traitors don't get caught and executed in a satisfactory manner, I am not sure what Queen Elara or her son will do."

It's funny how he doesn't say the new king's name, I almost want to smile for that small stab to the side. He doesn't know what I do now, about obsession and about personal interest, but he has dealt with _her _enough in the past, otherwise, I would not be married to a Merandus, and he would never have warned me in a tale of two queens, sitting together in the night.

Hector's eyes follow our verbal callouts and understanding with the bleak interest of a man sunken half into his glass and the relaxed state of off-hours. But he is far from stupid, and even if he supports and serves, he is still a Viper with his own opinion and venom.

"I don't think mercy is an option for anyone in charge," I explain. It is the only thing I know for sure.

I push a bit of hair behind my ear. My neck aches and cracks when I move it.

"No," He agrees. His sunken eyes and almost hollow cheeks shift with the rest of his face . He blows out a stream of worry. "Mercy is not an option. Not when you have to make sure you survive."

And I agree.

Mercy is never an option. Not with people that want to achieve the total victory and maintain the total control. We have to seek them out and kill them, suffocate them.

We are silver, and we have no mercy in our blood.

And we shouldn't.

"There was something undisclosed brought for you. Your mother went a little overboard seizing up the sentinel and courier, but I made sure no one could break the seal. And then she got distracted anyway." There is a mild crossness scrunching his brow and eyes further, just a second, even though he still sounds almost soft.

I expected a present. Something in me brims with low excitement, even, as my father is slipping the brown envelope into my fingers.

Outmost discretion, I see. I'm not that bad at being discrete, once the price is right.

Runt sleeps on her cushion behind him, dreaming until I rustle with the paper. Her ears tilt, her nose and eyes twitch and she shows her teeth once before relaxing again.

"You have private letters as well," My father chooses as his farewell. His eyes take me in a worrisome long moment.

And sure enough, when I reach the bedroom, just as before, someone has slid paper underneath my door.

Three envelopes. The one on top is an unwelcome invitation in Merandus colors. I don't feel the need to open it first. I put the formal address in navy blue to the side.

The second is another short letter from Larentia. I fly over the elegant writing and decide to read it at least once or twice again, just to make sure I don't miss any hints.

The third one reads my name 'Lady Daliah Viper' in crinkled, forced handwriting, shaky. Like the one of a child. And the envelope is rough and brown in comparison to the other paper. I turn it curiously. It comes from Summerton. I know who wrote this. I feel like the air has been sucked out of the room now.

**_'_**_Dear Lady Viper,'_ the smeared and shaking letters read.

Everything about the letter is cheap, not only the way it is formulated.

It feels like an emery paper in my hands, and it smells like dirty water. At the ridges, I can see that the envelope has been opened and closed. In times like this, a message from red to silver is an invitation to open it in hopes to find anything incriminating.

_I named the spider Cleo. She looks like one. I feed her and take care of her, and I think she likes me. _

As much as spiders can even like anyone. He has soft hands. She would like that. I can almost imagine her crawl over his shoulder.

_My family is bad. My sister is missing since the day people left their houses to get back to Archeon._

Most words are clunkily spelled wrong, and the pen has dug deeply into the paper_._

My hand swipes over my mouth, feeling the tingling scars over my lips and cheek.

His sister is missing. The sister that told me about the makeup and the list of people that the false Titanos met? A lot of twisted and tangled moves have happened since then. But without her note, I wouldn't have figured it out and made a deal with Maven.

_My mother got sick. We had some money to pay for some of her treatment. _

_I don't have a job. And they take me as soon as I turn fifteen in a few months. _

_I know you won't answer. I know you probably have better things to do._

_But. Thank you. _

The letter is so short, it may as well be just a stuttering voice, barely daring to speak upwards into the face of someone above.

_Replaceable,_ I told him. Fourteen years old with thin arms and wide, miserable eyes.

With an unwelcome, uncomfortable shift I sink into the pillows on my bed. The fabric feels like a cold dance of fingertips on my skin.

I didn't want to get him to the capital, and if I just send another badge of money, will that truly help in the long run?

Strange. I have never looked at red servants with more than the inferior tolerance of a silver noble. And suddenly I wonder how to best save a family.

Everything in my life transpires into anger and hatred. It spirals down and rises like the hawk that the prince burned with a gush of flames. It bathes me in searing fire and warms me at night. It severs the most unnecessary bindings of emotional weight that root people in their places.

Now, I barely feel anger, I feel distressed, and I hate that. I hate myself for it.

The letter disappears under my pillow for tonight, like a talisman that catches thoughts and dreams. If it will bring nightmares or peaceful slumber, who can tell. Tomorrow, I will hide it properly, just in case, even if someone already read it. I have enough hiding places around the mansion. If you grow up in a place and explore it in spiders' eyes, you find a hiding place or two.

I don't want to go to sleep in misery. Misery always makes me dream about something I lost and right now, I can't think about loss. I can't be merciful, I can't be distressed even more. I need to be focused.

The present is calling for my attention.

A small note in sprawled out but clean writing, much cleaner and less imposing of poverty than the red boy writing me.

It states the date and the exact moment of my last fight in the chasm. I know that even before I see the image.

I scratch my scarred cheek and lip softly, irritated.

The day of the Bowl of Bones is still fresh in my mind.

Pixellated black and white, it shows me, in the free-fall beyond a banister. My hair is open, everything about me is bleeding and grimacing, as far as anything is recognizable.

I'm soaring down in a strange embrace with a second figure.

He is blurred, but I remember his gritted teeth, brown eyes, the blink in which he followed and was gone again. Jumping through the air and escaping.

Still alive, I presume. Someone with the ability to escape will continue to use it.

Nothing else is written on the backside of the image. The text behind it, on the next page, is mechanical.

The face stares at me again, a little younger now, titled with a name.

_Shade Barrow._

Ah yes. Well, that does explain the similarities with the lightning girl and his body being hit by bullets in Naercy before she stepped up- family ties. And both with strange red power-infused blood in their veins. Is there a name for them? I would rather not just call them deformaties all the time.

The next face, and the next unpleasant recognition, because if I haven't tried to kill the blonde one with the red scarf too many times now.

Having a name to her face is interesting, to say the least. But there is no blood group, no report about desertion as I have received for dear jumping anomaly Shade Barrow.

_Farley. _

No blood group.

Nothing about the blonde one or the brother in the news or official channels. I know no one has written anything about them. And I would know what is being said. I sat in the whole meeting, full of fighting and insults.

But there is more, more, about the prince that burned my hawk, and the girl that fried my spider and almost murdered family close to me.

A list of names, with images, and I feel joy, because what better is there than to finally know the names of the people you will rip into pieces?

There is also a date for tomorrow's set, early morning, barely hours away. _It seems I'll go travel sometime soon._

My fingers flex on the paper, clenching, relaxing, burrowing my nails into the words.

I can work with this. This means I am back to be instrumental in my own vengeance and retribution.

It's low to manipulate me, sic me on people as I do with the dogs, but it is efficient, and it works. It's feeding me scraps, making me sharp.

My senses expand just as my nostrils take a deep breath soaked in excitement and anger. Forget the worrisome red boy. I want to hunt. I get to hunt.

I stuff everything back into the broken envelope. I should probably not have this open for everyone to see, but I will be dammed if I don't want to look at it for a while, just to burn the faces into my brain precisely.

Just for the right moment. Just for this.

And with that, with both the plea for help and the contract for a new hunt under my pillow, I relax for just a moment, before I mark myself ready for the chase.


	7. 7: Clandestine

_clandestine_

_-marked by, held in, or conducted with secrecy: surreptitious_

* * *

**_I_** only take as much spiders as my skin and pockets can carry, have them pressing against the back of the uniform. They crawl over my spine and sit in my hair before resting. A half-see through canister buzzes, taken from the Viper Pit, but I keep the lid up.

I can't take all the dogs with me for different reasons, or so I tell myself. I tell myself that the dogs are good tools, but that I can't waste any time discussing with my father if he needs them here. Then, there is still the damage. As much as I want some familiar company, I almost lost one to the red rat in the tunnels, and he still recovers. I can't take any of my Viper cousins, and I leave Loren and the others behind for this day.

Transportation is another reason. I need to travel now, and I don't have time to choose an elaborate row of creatures or anything even. I decide to travel light and if necessary, knives and bullets will do. Use the resources I get.

The house is quiet, except for the noises the animals always make through the hours that half of them fall asleep and the other half awakens. Their paws are loud on the wood as they follow me around. I say goodbye to my shield of bodies before I leave.

One Ear tries to snuggle up to me, but as soon as he walks forward, Runt snaps at him, and he retreats.

She uses the opportunity to squeeze on top of my body, and her heavy head uncomfortably presses on my arms and stomach, nudging me for attention. She huffs and puffs at my arm, pressing tightly against me.

"You be a good girl," I mutter and my fingers tangle in her shining, grey fur. Dark eyes and yellow ones meet when I deliberately make eye contact with her heavy form. "Keep an eye on your brothers and my father. And if anyone comes to close, you rip them to shreds."

She gives me a soft bark as an answer.

"Good girl," I repeat.

One Ear wags his tail once when I scratch his head as well.

"Yes, of course, you're a good dog too," I tell him and for whatever a dog's face can declare, it is almost a happy yellow-eyed look with the remaining ear gently pulled back.

I get transported along the heightened, deserted road even further away from Archeon, both with wheels and another means of transport soaring over the sky.

Through the humming and the quiet shaking, I fall asleep in my seat, and I treasure the moment of quiet.

The sun doesn't rise in an inferno of summer red this time. It comes up shyly, peeks up behind thick clouds, and it only gets slightly less perturbed as my transport lowers through the clouds in some blinking light and rotor blades. My ears pop unpleasantly, I swallow hard against it.

The air smells differently here. I can take one whiff, even without any supernatural nose, and I find myself catching the scent of the sea again.

The last few bits down the road toward the shuffling, big city surrounded by smaller plots of green and live, and I don't get turned through the front gate or even towards some bustling construction site or the big control center as I expected.

Instead, I get transported and escorted through Harbor Bay quietly by an officer wearing stoneskin colors. He has the broad shoulders and gait of a man that can reel out a good hit, but something rubs me the wrong way. Not only the fact that I made an enemy of many stoneskins.

This one isn't even Macanthos judging by the slight divergence of colors, he is a Thany, which only proves to me that the cuffed stonefist on the Macanthos banner is sinking, or that it has been approved not to let one of them be getting any closer to me than necessary.

It also isn't about the height. Almost everyone, men or women, is taller than me, especially in low soled but heavy combat boots. There is something in his eyes, something smart, below brute force. And he keeps staring at me.

No one ever knew my face here, even with the scars and the buzzing angry container I still carry. I am just another dark dressed uniform. Because in the slowly rising tide of bodies, a lot of military presence is laced into the crowds, the twists, turns, and every corner.

Not only stoneskins. I see one or two narrow eyes Marinos patrol, and I can imagine a deadly salve of screams coming from those banshees in the middle of a narrow road.

The salt and the brim of sulfur and green algae mix with smoke plumes and other rather standard city scents.

I didn't catch a good look at the city from above. When I stare into the sky I see a few bright shapes circling greedily. The booming horn of a ship rips through the screams of a seagull, very, very faint. Floodlights of the bridges and the rotund port have stopped circling the water with their all-seeing eyes from the night. It is all steel and cold stone in the distance.

Hector talked about construction sites, and I see it now, stretching somewhere behind me. Just a hint. Not enough to know about it if I didn't read and hear about it.

I shove the observation into the backside of my head and walk beside the officer.

In the early morning, the city is tinted with brooding grey shadows and cool light slowly warming to the day. We stop at the edge of a smaller alley. Not yet in the ratty part of this town, but far from the guarded and fenced parts that only silver blood has access to.

Before I step inside, I open the canister, and the angry sounds bind themselves in the rest of the morning bustling. The insects and bugs scatter in flapping, flickering wings and twitching antennas. The cloud evaporates and disappears in the morning air, and I make them sit on walls in the near vicinity. There is the pulse of the city brimming through the chitin. The small signals and waves that the civilization throws out, the invulnerable accent of technology. The stoneskin officer follows the cloud with slight interest. His eyes are blurry grey marbles.

There is a shadow that is even darker than the ones from the clouds rippling with resistance. He stands in the middle of the small alley, half in a doorway. My cousin's grey hair peaks in some glimmer in the irritating lights.

Another executioner, and one of my favorites at that.

"You're dismissed," my cousin says, and his gait strutting forward reminds me of Runt earlier, just a creature that knows it's more dominant than others. I follow deeper into the house.

The Thany Officer gives me a look and then ushers back.

I use the opportunity to brush up and close to Ptolemus, hands coiled at my side, back poised as best as I can. I still feel the pulse rushing through me, the small, crawling bodies have scattered over the outside of one wall and below a window. "How long have you been here?"

He feels me creep up, and he slows a moment. Just a pondering second, letting me catch up. "An hour."

"We could have gone together then," I answer. A Viper for a Samos. And don't I like to hide behind his back anyway? "Is your sister here?"

"Not here," he answers, clipped, and I see tension pressed together in his neck and jaw.

"Is she in the city?" I inquire, using every inch of movement to ask questions before it is too late.

He doesn't answer anymore now that he just escorts me forward.

My voice sounds a lot snider and cutting than I intend it to when I grit my teeth uneasy. "Why are we here and not already in the street? Are you going to brief me?"

The low profile made sense to me, if you have enemies to catch you don't want to parade around. But it makes even more sense when I step into the circulating, cool air. The room is harmless, a little dusted and unused, inconspicuous except for the inhabitants. And in the middle of them all, like some glimmer of tiny, crimson ember in the black of coal, there's Maven Calore.

Surprise after surprise.

No cape and crown today, and it strips him off some polished brand of pride that the images of him and the public appearance has tried to paint right after the unfortunate death of his father. And the whole rest of the fabricated stories.

At the edge of my sight, framing me, my cousin stands still.

It's strange. To know I stand between them because of lies. I made a deal with Maven for Ellyn's death and my silence, and it feels like that was a million years ago. On the very same eve, I pushed my knee on Ptolemus shoulder to stop bleeding.

He would be dead if it had been a better shot if he hadn't had tried to pull the bullet away.

He would be dead, and he doesn't know that his life was gambled and his purpose was reskinned to the useful executor he can be now.

"Good morning, your Majesty," I greet, thin-lipped. I spit that more out than it sounds courteous. A small rebellion by itself, oh my, and I don't even need red blood sprinkled with power for it. "My scarce information did not suggest you would also be here. But I take it that this means everyone is sure this will be a successful action, then."

If my snide commentary is making him regret sharpening me for an attack, he doesn't say anything.

"Have you ever been to Harbor Bay before?" he asks instead, leaning forward. Behind us, feet shuffle, and another group of voices mixes with a signal sound behind another door. The metallic clinking of guns distracts me. I want a finger on the trigger right now badly. I yearn for that. I want violence. I want blood.

"No, I grew up in the Rift and in Archeon," I answer, honestly, and catch Ptolemus black eyes watching both of us precariously.

I wish I had the dogs shuffling below my knees.

Runt would be ready to tear anyone's limbs off. The thought is heartwarming. She wouldn't care for curtsy, she would snap because she is a protector.

Imagine, our dear newly crowned king losing a hand to a dog. It holds some satisfaction to imagine the metal of his bracelets on the floor, with his blood sputtering everywhere. Until someone gets to him and heal him, even a silver will be weak from the blood loss and break together. But even if I drained all of his royal blood, he can't get much paler than he already is. Like some sleep-deprived ghost in dark colors.

It is the same with me. I feel tired to my bones. The weight pushes on my shoulders. And it never ends, the lying never stops.

I rather not say anything.

"I don't think I like it very much," I continue instead, and earn the shadow of a smile.

"Me neither. But I think we dislike it for a different reason."

"Probably. I am only here to hunt down traitors, rebels, and...deformities. The small talk, I fear, has to wait," A dog guards, and it hunts. What else is the reason for its creation? A creature that licks blood will continue to do so. Because it likes the taste. And I am excited about the taste. It's one of the few things I feel.

When Maven stands up, he lingers over me by a bit, and I feel the need to stretch myself. I am trying to stand tall enough to conquer the height around me. My teachers and family taught me poise and stance. I try to be poised now, respectful, and demanding the same.

"Deformities," Ptolemus repeats behind my shoulder.

I tilt my head but don't look back. "What should I call them?"

"New Blood is the most commonly agreed term." Maven Calore's blue eyes are somewhere in the distance like some caught glimmer on a sky, but when he blinks, his face is blank like a sheet again, drained of color or emotion. He weights something in his hand, and I stare at it, a silver device foreign to my limited knowledge, perfectly fit his fingers.

"New Blood," I say, tasting the word on my tongue. "No, I will stick with deformities and anomalies for now."

New Blood. I may need to get accustomed to that term.

That stubborn refusal somehow amuses both of them in their own way, just a small spark in the tense air.

"What are my orders and what is your plan of action to capture them in a timely manner?"

Now this dark-haired boy without his crown and dramatic antics looks at me like I have just asked him if fire is hot and water wet. Incredulous, almost.

"A trap," he mockingly sure explains. "And we wait for it to snap shut."


	8. 8: Indomitable

_indomitable_

_-incapable of being subdued: inconquerable_

* * *

**_W_**hile we wait and while more streams of commands and looks get exchanged, I slowly grasp the situation and fill the details in myself from the scarce sharpening sheet to the radio calls and my insects fluttering around the heads of some men patrolling down the road and up to Ocean Hill, where the command center stands.

Last time the tunnels were flooded by nymphs. This time, no water controller takes time to seal off the tunnels. Because smartly, either by his own idea of by some hint, the construction sites here in the city are cutting the underground escape off.

It is one less hassle and one less thing to worry about. Instead of drowning red rats in tunnels this time, the remaining nymphs are set beside everyone else, just to make sure that the other burner prince doesn't flash too much fire and breaks any kind of trap.

If you fight both the probability of a flame wall and a lightning strike at the same time, water is only so effective.

My hands clench around the weapon I hold. A dark, big instrument of terror with enough recoil to pull me off my feet if I don't stand safe. It is still easily beautiful, as most weaponized things are crafted for silvers.

There certainly is terror in the violence of the swarm. Not that I would know much about stunning beauty out of my own body experience. But I have eyes, and I was once younger.

Our dear new king believes that they will show up here with a bigger probability. He isn't even sure that they will, but it is his better bet, and no one dares to question him. It seems reasonable, with the evidence he presents to me. That evidence is the fact there are two anomalies in Harbor Bay.

When I quietly ask Ptolemus how he can be sure, I get no response. I will have to ask later again.

I catch a bit about red criminals worming through the city. Nothing new there, some organized bunch. I catch something about some of them in cells and something about cut off limbs and trigger fingers as a message and threat.

A cut off body part is a message. To be quiet. To comply. To come begging for mercy.

A cut off body part is a message. To be quiet. To comply. To come begging for mercy.

It depends on what part you cut off the person. I guess someone like Maven with a mother like he has and elaborate history of violent acts in his short reign would know about that. And so I do not comment on a cut off trigger finger.

The next hour is just me, crouching through the streets of Harbor Bay, and I could seemingly admire the old buildings the way I stare them down into the fundament that they were built on.

I don't fully agree with the way they want to carry out the plan. If I were in charge, I would hide even more forces at the control center. If someone is reckless enough to come into the city, with not only someone able to jump through space but also a clearly connected enough red rebel and a former silver prince, I would be sure they jump the gun and get there, because they feel too sure and safe.

And what better place would a control center be to stake out your latest addition to your rag tag group of traitors?

My bugs flutter through the air in search of any clue. The whole unit of fighters, officers, soldiers, is taunt and on alarm. They wait for something to happen. It is almost noon, and nothing has changed.

Harbor Bay misses animosi. No dog unit, like in other forts or cities, and that is a mistake. I imagine that if I had a pack of dogs instead of a pack of banshees and stoneskins swarming around, we would be able to sniff them out so easily. Not even someone that jumps through space can escape the traces of scent he leaves for dogs to pursue. Not forever.

My vendetta is very personal for poor Shade Barrow and the blonde one named Farley. And the proclaimed traitor prince owes me a few feathers he burned from my hawk.

"I am sure you'll care for the jumping one," I note. He gave me the scars, and I intend to not just let it happen again.

"Yes," my cousin informs me.

I look over where the handful of swifts are stationed. Fast enough to catch someone that is immensely fast. Not the worst idea. "Good."

The thought about _New Blood's_ sticks with me.

"They sure don't have any training, do they?" I inquire, silent walking on the road. I wait for the right moment to make sure no one can listen in, supernatural senses or devices. "The - targets in the city. Not the traitors, of course."

"No."

And how would they? They are still red. Beyond surviving possible conscription, what are their possibilities for education and combat training? If they can read, that is already more than enough.

"Not to be crass," I state, trying to be humble and lowering my whole head and stance. No one buys it. They all see my gritted teeth and hard eyes. "But I can't watch the whole city at once, that would be impossible."

People are tired of my questions and words by now. They are glad I am silent most of the time. I stand to attention like I did in Naercy, mostly, that is the only reason I have not been thrown in some arrest cell or beaten. And maybe, just maybe, there is at least the attempt of dialogue between me and my cousin and Maven Calore as we wait. And every breath is too long.

I hide deeper inside my insects. I crawl inside their strange brains, take in their sensory perception and try to block any emotion except for the twitching, harsh excitement.

The stone shakes and breaks around them, vibrations all over the city. But not one note on the targets.

The sun rises slowly. Here, close to the ocean, the breeze is fresh and cool. The sun is hiding behind thick grey clouds again.

And so I stare forward, out of the cover, hidden behind brittle bricks.

"If you know their whereabouts," I wonder for a moment in hiding with our king, as I switch positions, relentless and waiting with less and less snapping patience for any reports. "Why not capture both the targets to make sure that they can't aid an escape or even just get acquired?"

"One has been found and seized, and I think you will see that there is no way for him to aid anyone anymore soon."

He weighs that device in his hands again, and for a moment I think it is a trigger or some sort of detonator. Because there is clearly something about it that proves it was created to kill or at least hurt.

I can't get more than a glimpse before it disappears again.

It looks almost like a disruptor of sorts, some instrument to shock a target, maybe an interceptor? Or perhaps the small silver thing is a weapon I haven't seen yet. I know some sort of guns and technology, but I am no expert. My first husband was good at this. He held me long speeches about weaponry, from procedures to design and retrofit them. He talked about the closed-up cities and enclosures in which reds produced them. He told me about guns, about how to clean them (as if I didn't know that). He also talked, ironically, about artillery and grenades. He wasn't a very versatile partner for conversation he had to carry, and his family declared me unfit to serve, calling me a danger.

They were right about that. But they can't tell anyone, because they are very dead and gone.

Now, Maven is right about his promise to see that at least one of them doesn't represent any threat.

Whatever the man was or what he could have been, he's just a kicking , helpless creature now that two of the officers string him up right here in a square.

My borrowed eyes watch with antennas twitching, sending a blurred image of a man that is maybe my age. He kicks and struggles, but his will is as broken as his neck will be when the noose is readied on his throat.

Violence in any form is a part of life. It is part of us, the second we enter in this cold, broken world. To rule it, or to serve. Eat or get eaten, I said to a collar of poor jewelry encrusted stink bugs as they scattered away into the sunshine. And if that is not the most profound truth.

The first time I saw a corpse, I was a child. Maybe around seven or eight. I was told before that red in their natural impoverished state were replaceable and weak. Not to dabble with them. Because we weren't the same.

That day, one of the vehicles crushed one of the servants under their wheels. The dogs were livid in the kennels, and the other servants had to clean up the mess. I remember a woman with a hose that usually sprayed the pavement in front of the kennels clean. She was washing his blood and other pieces off the entry to the yard.

To convince me and my sometimes impudent nature as a child, we walked closer. Maybe it was curiosity as well.

His body was mangled and dressed poorly. He may have been my father's age alive. I imagine a red his age has had a handful of children, dead or alive.

I will never know his name.

I can't remember when I saw a beating for the first time. I also don't remember the first time I truly realized I held power over the people that crawled through the mud at our feet to serve. It is a natural thing to assume power over the weak. It is ingrained into the heart of myself and my noble heritage.

I am, even for silver standards, lucky to be unlucky elite. I watch the heads of our country fall and rise from a good seat.

Even if it was never enough. I could have bragged.

Even if people will always better than me. I could have taken advantage of the fact I will always be a little more privileged than some other silver and that we all stand miles above any red all our lives.

I have watched fires and fights, I have seen death in colors of the rainbow, explosions and broken bones. Dead silver children, dead red ones. Violence is a part of the blood that flows through my veins.

And yet, now that I watch this man, I feel sick. My stomach twists and turns, pressing together.

The image of a red boy with misery in his face comes to my mind, and I feel something deeply burrowed inside my chest. Not pain. Not even empathy. But..something. I push the thought away weakly.

I never learned the name of the first red corpse.

I learn that this one, whatever you may call him else, with red blood still floating through his body, was named Wolliver.

I taste that name with the same poise and dislike as I tasted the word "New Blood", but nonetheless, I remember the name, and it's strange to think that I will carry it with me, even when they cut him off the rope and throw his corpse into a hole.

In the end, it is all we are. Stardust in the void of gods that nortan proclaim themselves to be. A name. On a list. On a gravestone. Shouted in the air. Or forgotten.

The bugs around me scatter and seem to explode in a cloud.

Over my head, one seagull circles lonesome.

I watch Wolliver's feet dangle in the air a second, and they almost look like he kicks again a moment. But then he lies flat and cool on the string that holds him here, and we are just a unit of hunters in waiting, accompanied by a silent square, silent streets, and a corpse.

Ptolemus is so close behind me I feel his breath on my neck as warm as the heat that spreads from the lamps in my glass cages. My muscles recoil as I repulse and refuse any kind of eye contact. My eyes only latch more tightly to every detail of the corpse swaying gently back and forth. Every pore of his skin, with the red subsiding and pale , even blue creeping into limbs, the quelling of a tongue. It isn't too different from all the maimed, dead, swollen, hacked or exploded bodies I have witnessed falling.

_If I look away from this corpse, I am weak._

My stomach turns even more and the cranky, badly spelled letter resurfaces in my mind, another image of a boy and more corpses. Children dead on the floor, shot silver soldiers, a diplomat on a spear in the middle of a ballroom. A man shooting himself in the skull. Nameless red on a square, falling to bullets and shards of metal.

The imagery doesn't leave me alone and I see them all. They storm into my brain and drain me out of all my pulsing excitement, out of all my indifference.

I still stare at the corpse.

_If I look away, I am too weak._

I want to vomit. The feeling rises to my throat in a clump.

_This man was a deformity in the system, and he deserved to die for it. He would have died one way or another. There is no mercy. I know that. I told my father._

As long as I have stared at his body, it is those last words that propel me back into my normal state of mind and harden my intestines like stone mimicry of my enemies.

I blink once, press my eyelids tightly together, stitch the image of one more corpse into the tapestry of death that adorns my life, and move on.

The weapon in my hand shakes slightly. I'm glad my hand is not at the trigger yet.

My cousin is so close I could touch his arm, a tall, lurking frame right now, black and silver. I told him I would not disappoint him. He is in charge of me and in this strange display of youthful hierarchy, he is still above me and just the nudge below of Maven somewhere on the other side of the bricks to my right.

My cheek burns and rips when I gnaw on my cheek. The blood tastes hot and satisfies something inside me for a moment.

I presume this man had a family. Will they hang too, or will they just be locked away?

If they kill them, they should be more efficient about it. But of course, it is all about the show. We are all for the display.

A big, mean seagull hops over the rooftop next to me, and I press one hand against the bricks before squeezing inside the bird and pulling it up to study the city from the air.

Just like in Naercy and the Bowl, I forget what my feeble consciousness throws at me, and I wait, knives strapped, gun ready, creatures swirling.

I am stalwart staunt, and I won't budge. I won't let anyone burn me and scar me again today.


	9. 9: Nerve

_nerve_

_-sinew, tendon_

_-any of the filamentous bands of tissue that connect parts of the nervous system with the other organs, conduct nerve impulses, and are made up of axons and dendrites together with protective and supportive structures_

_-power of endurance or control :fortitude, strength_

_-assurance, boldness: also: presumptuous audacity_

_-a sore or sensitive point _

* * *

_**M**_y heart pulses with the beating wings of the seagull. The rhythm is strong and keeping a balanced, steady pace.

If you get to choose if you want to fight a seagull or a crow, I would advise to choose wisely. Crows may be smart, and they serve an aesthetic that some presumptuous girl in the care of feathers may appreciate. But the fat, grey seagull above serves the purpose as well. It may even serve the purpose better. The hawk was a valuable asset, it was a trained and readied beast. But the seagull is one of many above the rooftops of harbor bay. It strides through the air with the same greed and hunger, and it will never be satisfied.

That and the amount of shit it thereby produces, coupled in those light colors basically makes it just the animal counterfeit of some people I know well. Sadly, a seagull is not venomous, and it induces less fear in me.

But, that is not to dismiss, a seagull has a surprisingly good perception too, and as it shrieks and calls, falling through a ceiling of smoke.

I'm a spectator of sorts, as it flings itself lower, catching commotion on the road and watching violence and commotion unfold.

Above the hill, the building that stood silent and resilient for shackling and acquiring control over the population, a security center, is ruined now. That much has been told.

I bite my tongue hard to stop the sharp comments from spilling over it, continue to rip into my cheek. What did I say about reinforcing the building? But no, I guess, make a trap convincing, a fortified building would have been no good. And it would have denied to take the glory of the pot, to take the head himself.

When I turn around, nothing has changed.

Everyone is still in their hiding positions, my cousin is still breathing on my neck.

The dead young man on the rope still dangles, and his face slowly has started to lose and warp form, not too much, as he is still fresh, but it has started. The decay.

It seems that no matter if red, silver, or else, we die and rot the same way.

I can't stare at the corpse for too long, only the most decent and needed amount of a few grazing seconds.

"The targets on the road," I susurrate, a comment as if I watch a threatre play unfold in birds eyes. One glimpse of dirtied, dazed bodies running, flying through the air. Silver, red , and whatever you want to call the Barrows. Anomalies, defected, New Blood. "Look mostly unharmed."

That sounds disappointed. Maybe I am. The trap is supposed to snap shut, and it needs to. Without a victory this time, it only gives the enemies more time, and more time means more waste.

It means that giving up any grip on information and losing resources and soldiers in the control center, it seems not worth it to me.

Maybe it is just because I have been trying to grab resources for years only to be left alone in a house to rot, and because my father's cheap dealings and policy have left some fresher imprint again.

My hand ponders over the smooth surface of the metal. It has warmed up under my touch. I need one push at the trigger to rip a hole into a stomach.

Sadly enough, there are limitations to killing the targets. Acquiring some alive is more pressing, and orders are orders. Even if they leave a sour taste and a ring in my ears.

But I swear to the blood in my mouth and veins, no one will burn me alive this time, no one will shatter my bones.

And so we wait for the signal while above and below me, the ground shakes, and the small group creeps closer through Harbor Bay and surroundings, towards us.

The lingering of predators in waiting for prey, watching in complete silence over the dangling corpse and the empty space below. The sky is dressed in drifting clouds.

The closer they get, the more I feel my pulse quicken and my breath rising. The scars tingle and my fingers wait in anticipation. To my left, Maven Calore has crept up the perimeter, concealed and hidden, surrounded by more guards and soldiers.

To my right, I can see a vein on Ptolemus throat pulse, and it looks the same way that I feel, rushing under the pale skin.

I think about the promise not to disappoint, about orders, and about following, but I don't have time to make any reassurance. I don't have time for anything but hold tightly to my weapon.

Then it starts. Finally.

My fingers cramp again around the gun in anticipation. In the far corner of the statue, some of my bugs and wasps scatter and fly away in a small, dark cloud.

The first one is the blonde one, and my ears tingle and screech, because she doesn't have a weapon now and will get no chance to get one. The Barrows and the prince are right beside, and they all have found the most obvious bait. The jumping one is still injured from the shots in Naercy. I think about my poor limping dog for a moment, and the red rat that has killed herself after getting captured. Maybe a limp for a limp is a good start.

But how about a scar for a scar?_  
_

_A broken spine for a broken spine._

They are distracted by the corpse. I can see them stare, and I can hear them debate.

Half of them can't just blink whatever impact it has on them away.

My body is surging and shaking. Begging to let loose and move. But I can be patient. I have been patient and waiting so, so long. What is one more moment now? Sweet retribution and blood price, for my face, my pride, and for myself.

And then, the silent signal gets pushed with the fall of a hand and a nod, and the trap snaps shut with force.

It is a well-coordinated attack, and the fact we have waited has given us at least that advantage.

The fast ones are first. Just as they were promising me, the swifts swarm right up the jumping one to stop an escape. They separate him flushing and fast from the group.

Then the bodies next to me move, and I release all tension and move behind my cousin.

Cornered animals tend to snap. These ones are no different.

My swarm in the sky screams in alarm about the sudden change in temperature and I duck. Right beside me, electricity flies into nothingness. The lightning girl at least tries to fight.

She hasn't made that plan with my dear Samos cousin though, and seeing him kick her around almost would give me satisfaction. Almost.

I expect another barrage of lightning, but that never comes. I assume then that the silver device has done its purpose.

When I look over, I see Maven Calore's back, and the girl on the ground. I remember how he asked me of all people about love, and I asked him about obsessions.

He must be overflowing with satisfaction.

It will make him insufferable to work with.

Next to me, a stoneskin and a greeny waver back. Heat flickers over us, and the flames coming from Tiberias Calore are hot and angry and deadly. I can feel them singe my arm and the closeness curls some of my hair. The reeking stink of burned hair is disgusting in my stomach.

Every single one of them is surrounded, hopelessly outnumbered. The last time we lost. With an army.

Shot flings by my ear and I duck again, just in time to see a bullet brush past me. It flies straight at Ptolemus face, before the metal slows, excruciatingly stays still in the air, and finally, and very harmlessly, drops to the ground. Another follows, a third.

I turn my head and look at the flushed, dirty face of the blonde one and a corpse.

"Not this time, red rat," I tell her and pull the trigger for effect.

The heavy recoil of the shotgun flings me back for a second.

It breaks cobblestone right under her right boot, a threat, a warning. Splinters snap upwards, and the sound gets lost in the cacophony of fighting that drowns the whole world and paints it in the color of blood.

I didn't hit her. But it makes her move, distracts her from the next shot herself.

And even if I can't shoot the girl or the prince, I can perfectly well aim to hurt this one.

The handle of the gun, the same warm, sweet metal that lends my finger to the trigger, now hits her. The impact of the massive weapon clocks her right in the side of the head and the temple and knocks her down. Flying in dirty clothes and blood on her face, she rolls over the ground in the impact of the hit.

Her own weapon slides down and out of reach.

I give it another kick, and in the corner of my eyes, I can see my cousin's silhouette turning forward, now that the bullet rain has stopped for a moment, stepping through the cluttering metal on the ground.

Before she can stand up, I kick her, as hard as I can, unloading my whole anger and fear, the strange cutting wonder about the dead body. I want them to feel the same pain as a broken jaw and spine.

To my right, the scuffle and fight have still not been broken off. Tough ones. To my left, no fire, and lightning. Just a writhing, a miserable small form of a girl, and the fact she is still moving is a small token of strength.

I don't have any appreciation, though, and no time. This one here, Farley, is on my list.

It takes my feet in the combat boots one more step and I stand right above her. Red rebel, scarlet guard, murderer, rat. This time, nothing distracts me. She can't run and she will not be saved.

Her eyes are hard as the stone that has splintered and smoldered around us.

My heavy sole finds her face. Before she can stand up, I put my foot down and push. I see her fighting it, fighting the pain, the force that I enact, but she is at my mercy.

And I have no mercy. I could crush her skull right here, right now. Instead, I just put the muzzle of my gun to her head, not yet pulling the trigger.

"Move," I dare, and she grits her teeth when I shift my boot on her head. My fingers are warning on the hilt. "Move and I shoot."

The loaded barrel will just explode her brain. At least she won't be as horribly harpooned as Lerolan or burned and ripped to pieces as his children, and she wouldn't be breaking to pieces or drowning as me and my fellow silver soldiers in the chasm and the bullet and lightning rain in the bowl or Naercy.

On my other side, it seems, they've finally managed to subdue the burner prince.

This is it. This is the end. We have won.

With another surge of wild adrenaline, it seems impossible to take in, that it was this...easy. Almost.

And as fast as I have garnered that thought, it is lost. Because my arm and my body gets smashed, and something rams into me with force. It's blurry, alive, and heavy breathing.

It reminds me of the struggle at the bannister and the fall, and I have no doubt the jumping one somehow has managed to escape the hold.

The gun slips off Farley's head.

I scream, and the cloud above my head sizzles angrily when another flame shot rips into it. I look back.

And she is gone.

This can't be happening.

To my other side, my cousin and our king now move. But they are too slow, and no one can shoot something they don't see.

Leap after leap. And they are gone. All are gone in three blinks.

The silence on the square isn't anticipating or in triumph anymore. Between charred and dangling bodies, injured and dead, we stand in stunned stupor fo a moment.

I don't wait for a command. I spring into action and run. I run down the nearest alley.

Every bug, spider, and fly, everything that inhabits this city, rises. Like a black flood, we scatter to find the prey.


	10. 10: Shiver

_ (ok pls be gentle this was..very hard to write, still trying my best to come back into the business, I will probably review all of this anyway as I did the first book)  
_

_shiver_

_\- one of the small pieces into which a brittle thing is broken by sudden violence_

_-to undergo trembling: quiver  
_

_-to tremble in the wind as it strikes first one and then the other side_

_-a group of shark: herd, frenzy  
_

_Fandomspecific: silver ability to control ice and freeze things (completely unrelated to this chapter though except one remark)  
_

* * *

**_L_**ife was normal in the everflowing ways of red and silver. Now people have long noticed the presence of soldiers that run through the streets in a frenzy. Now that the trap has snapped shut and failed to execute in the demand, the silence is worthless. And so the forces move as loud as they want in their own city again.

With every footstep, I sweep through the alleys and I bury the stone under a flood of small bodies. The clouds above my head get darker, buzzing dark aftermath of anger, and I pull and push them with me.

I am the plague.

The anger boils in my blood. It presses my bones together and makes my heart pound harshly.

As always, the needles that prick my scalp have failed me, and partially singed strands have escaped.

Every bouncing of a strand is the bouncing of thoughts, every needle prick is the repetition of the same cycle of conclusions.

I warned them. I warned all of them. People never listen to me. I thought that had changed now, but it doesn't mean a thing.

They escaped before, twice now, thrice, too many times, and somehow it never gets less irritating to know the rats have swum away and hidden again in some secret hole in the ground.

Not today. Not after the almost guaranteed victory.

My hands are shaking, chipped short nails, and one sleeve stained with dust.

I put them into the air, and the cascade of bodies hurls down, moves after my fingers. It spreads and feels the ground, it sees through the static waves that surround our world, and it trembles in waves along with the electricity.

I can be a hundred eyes and wings at once. I_ am_ a prodigy. I was never exaggerating.

Soaring through the sky, wind blowing on chitin, I struggle and fight, but everything I feel fills more holes. The facette eyes bring me information until I feel like I will implode.

I catch the glimpse of a body on a string. It sways back and forth,a s dead as it was. Black dressed, harsh figures move around it. One is young, pale and fighting some sort of combusting tension. One close by is grey-haired. He catches the bug closest to it, narrow eyes. Mouth voice syllables easy to read in a command.

_Come back._

I bite my lip and cheek hard, curl the hands into fists, eyes fluttering with every blink of my lashes clicking on my watering eyes.

The constant movement makes them hard to grasp. They jump too fast. But even with someone in their group that can appear and reappear in thin air. They can't constantly be on the run. He'll get tired. If he isn't already. I can't imagine the swift soldiers were too nice to him, and he was limping already.

I catch a glimpse on the outskirts of Harbor Bay, off the tracks, and regular roads. The clouds of bodies aggregate together.

I should turn back and take new orders. I need to follow. I should share this fizzle of information.

Instead, I start to run. I run like I haven't run for a long time. Faster than in the woods, more obstinate than in the tunnels. But less desperate than other times as well.

I run so fast, my veins seem to explode.

My feet carry me fast across and beside rooftops.

No tunnels and no water to flee to this time.

Rounding the group up in a cloud of black insects, I feel like I glide more than I run now.

The first thing that I feel is the burning hot flame that scorches me and the bugs around me. immediate, brutal heat incinerating feelings.

I roll around in a practiced motion, evading the direct contact, but more of my hair catches the flame. It creates a vomit-inducing smell.

Diana Farley's face still carries the print of my sole, and as unconscious as one of the Barrows is, the jumping brother is very much alive and doing well. But not too long anymore.

The burner prince looks exhausted but unscarred. He doesn't pull the flames higher, we are both gambling for time to be found now.

"Lady Viper," his voice echoes over the empty space between us. A distraction, it is a distraction , I know it. "I know you. I knew Roman well. This is not what it looks like, you're alone, don't make me-"

"Make you what?! Kill me? GO ON!" The wings around me buzz angrily. "I don't care what the world thinks or your brother spits out of that pit of lies he has for a mouth, I'm going to hunt you to the end of the world," I promise him. "It's all I have!"

I draw the knives strapped to my legs, and even though I am no metal bender, the sharp edges seem to sing to me. With two steps, I cross the space, dust, and incinerated insects flying around me.

The next thing I know, I blink, and while the unconscious, sprawled out form of Mare Barrow still lies flat, her brother is gone, and so is Diana Farley. And then flames spring up on top of me, while something hits the back of my head so hard I feel something in my neck and jaw crack.

I lose consciousness again, black and blurry, everything dies around me in the fire, a million screams of pain.

* * *

The dreams send me through needles of pain, hearing voices from my past. Flashes of things I have seen.

_A dead child, my hands smeared with blood. The image mixes with myself standing at a window, nails digging in my palm, a small ring at my pinky, with hair weighting my back in a braid. I watch a bird fly past, wings spread high as it flutters up in shock. _

_Next to me stands a beautiful woman adorned with green and black jewelry and the eyes of a murderous mountain lion. She doesn't flinch when the bird gets hit with a piece of silver metal and falls, a target taken down by silver-haired children._

_She doesn't move her eyes away from the bleeding, dying creature. "Never forget," she says. "Creatures are expendable. Everyone is. They're not your family."_

_ "Creatures are expendable," I agree and try to stand straight, in case she chooses to look at me. "You are my family."_

_She doesn't smile. But I know that she hears me. That is enough. And I run back to my training, as fast as I can._

_As fast as I can, too fast, so fast. Everything around me flurries, and I feel like I am back in my nightmares, held by whispers, as the flames, the bullets, the explosions and splinters take my world. And I fall down the chasm, into the morass, jaw-breaking, pain and fear blinding lights_.

My blood feels frozen in my veins. Icicles of cold sweat run over my back. I feel it, even in this nightmare. A hand touches me.

The hand touches my throat. It feels cold. The images in my mind wander down to my heaving chest when I swallow. The hand tingles, the fingers linger over my skin. It could choke me.

Something from my dreams has followed me into real life, and it burrows through my paranoia riddled mind.

The hand belongs to my whisper husband, and it will choke me. I ruined everything, I failed, and now they will remove me- and he'll love to do it.

With a high pitched shriek that seems to break my skin, I leap up, hand swinging upward to hit.

My fist connects with a chin, soft, pale skin, blond hair. I can hear a gruff sound of pain and feel the bludgeoning hit pounding through my knuckles.

The world is twisting and turning in darkness and small, white cones of light.

Another twisted breath of panic and I jump up, bare feet sliding over the ground. It feels cold, sleek. I'm in a bedroom. I need to flee. I need to get out and away.

With two steps I leap up the door and push the handle. It opens without any problem.

My feet pound over the ground, and I swing through the hallway, trying to figure out where I am, what is happening, but I can't think. It's like the time in the Hall of the Sun. I break and fold together on the inside. The panic consumes me like the fire consumed my insects.

I can't breathe and I can't speak.

When I round the corner, I hear someone shouting behind me, and a uniformed frame appears before the door.  
And then I can see the alarming figure I just hit, dressed in bright white, and I look forward and want to run even faster.

I make it exactly three more stumbling steps before I crash into hard metal scales and black, smooth fabric. Ptolemus looks down half in some sort of surprise and half frazzled, pale, and stained with dirt.

"What are you doing?!"

My voice is an incoherent babble that proves that I have lost my mind when I edge closer to him, just so I can hide behind him as I did so often the last weeks. "Don't let him kill me, I swear by my colors I am sorry I disappointed you, I swear I meant what I promised. I can do better, I can do better, don't get rid of me, I was so close."

His mouth opens slow as if to breathe, or to answer, I don't know. His dark eyes narrow slightly when they wander beyond me past the hallway.

The voices behind us get loud. Fight or flight. And I can't decide. I can't decide what to do. I am weak and I can't even breathe.

For a second I think Ptolemus wants to shield me with his body, but he doesn't. Instead, he gives me one long, almost quizzically look that seems to be filled with something grave.

Then he simply grabs me, hands hard like the cutting steel he wears and uses in fights. He hoists me up and carries me back the way I have run like I am just some bag to carry over one shoulder.

My hand tries to grip at the scales while I scream, and I cut myself on some sharp edge. Silver blood quivers and flows down the side of my finger. His hands clench so hard around my body they hurt. But everything is numb and meaningless beside the pale terror in my soul.

"She's going to let them kill me, the mind readers are going to kill me, I know how easy it is for the butcher. I watched him kill men with the twitch of his finger. He won't flinch, he likes to see me hurt."

"No one will kill you," Ptolemus answers, voice snide and carries me onward, feet kicking weakly as a stranded fish suffocating on land. His hard hands and the fresh blood ground me in some sort of twilight, a half clear reality tainted in madness.

Maybe everyone was right. I must be mad. This happens again and again. I must be mad.

"I wasted the opportunities, he told me they would after the sun shooting," I mutter at his ear but stop resisting. "Please don't leave me to them, please don't leave me alone."

"Your husband is not here," he answers and ungracefully drops my weakly shaking form on the bed that I have run from again. "You are still in Harbor Bay."

"I am still..." I can't finish the thought. The white-dressed figure appears in my field of sight. Not Merandus white. Skonos. A healer. I punched a healer. "Oh. Oh."

And that is the last thing I say, still blinking against the haze of panic.  
We are silent, but he grips my hand and unclenches my bloody fingers.

Just like the night at the sun shooting, silver blood on scales, and a trembling grip on a hand. His silver-grey hair is like some halation in the cones of light.

I don't let go of him. He squeezes me painfully hard, and I want to thank him, but I can't speak.

The sun has reached a high point at the sky when I wake up. Big windows, now visible and open to let in fresh air. Two doors in the room. A single, empty cage that stands between them, fabric of a sheet half ripped away. No doubt a remant of my fight with the healer and Ptolemus.

The view is blue. That is all to see. If it is sky or ocean, I don't know, I can barely focus.

I press my eyelids together. Frames blur in my sight, they move. The guards are posted at the end of the window, by the doors that lead outside to the water that swims in my sight and inside the house.

"Awake," one guard realizes. The voice is nasal and stinging in my ear. A banshee, Marinos, brown muddled color on the uniform badge, skewed eyes, dark buzzcut of short hair, sneering mouth.

"Go report that," the other one says. To whom? The king? My cousin? More guards?

My eyes blink hard and push him into my periphery. Stoneskin, Thany and looks familiar, if only angrier. I suspect every single soldier alive looks angry and battered. He rolls his broad shoulders, but has no hand at any weapon. "I'll wait here."

And with that, the lithe figure dressed in grey and brown disappears.

"You're the one that escorted me through the city when I arrived," I try to start the conversation. Just to get at least enough familiarity to question him. I don't think I have the power to order him. If I had it, I have lost it. Just like I lost the rebels.

The guards didn't get posted for my safety. They got posted for my insubordination. The pain is gone, but my head stings with the terrible clarity this may lead me to another demotion or even cell. Because I was warned I would disappear if I couldn't do my tasks and keep my mouth shut. And I failed today. I promised not to. And I failed them all, every oath and promise to people with the same blood. Or people that bind me by my blood.

I swallow harshly and sit up. The sheet falls. I still wear my shirt and pants, at least. Even if they are drenched in sweat, ash, and blood.

"How long was I out?"

"Two days," he answers clipped. Now his hand is at his weapon. The more I move, the closer it creeps to something that almost looks like the interceptor Maven used against the lightning girl, but less rare. This will just shock me when I dare to move, a small portion of electrocution to bathe me in more pain. "You were awake once and punched a healer."

The nightmare comes to my mind, hands touching me. I feel the sweat again, and I must stink, hair a mess on my head in knots and singed bits.

"If you're here and everything is quiet, it probably means no one has been caught, else I would not be able to hear myself over the parade of triumph and the broadcasts blaring it into the world."

"Some were close. But no."

Indeed, very close. But I don't think he means me.

"What a shame," I mutter and sit up slow, sliding out of the sheet. I am still barefoot."Where were you stationed, during the assault? I didn't see you on the square when they strung up...that red-blooded one."

He avoids my gaze. "I was at the control center."

"Ah. Tell me you fought well before you lost. I need to hear something nice about this attack."

"I smashed the head of the jumper into a wall." He shrugs.

That catches my attention good enough. I flicker forward with interest. "Your name, soldier?"

_War makes widows and soldiers fall into trenches to die._

_All part of the endless war machinery._

I don't ask for his name so it won't be forgotten. I only do it for personal reasons. For later.

"Asher Thany."

I nod. Then I step toward the glass door leading to the blue. He steps straight in my way.

"Asher," I say, voice hoarse, throat dry. "Move to the side."

"You won't run."

I shake my head, belittling a man for a stupid question. He looms over me like most anyone else does, bulging and heavy like a boulder. "Where to? I already tried."

* * *

The pier is small, narrow, made of wood. It leads between two rocks and across the breaking sounds of surge and tide. I roll up my pants, away from my ankles, and push the feet into the water. It smells heavy of green and salt, algae giving the blue a touch of green.

Just as my hands attracted schools of fish, my body acts in the way an antenna does now again. I see the small bodies whirl under the heavy clouts of seafoam. They flinch in shuddering motions around my toes and back to the stones. I watch them a moment until they disappear. Instead of fish scales, the grating, yet strangely smooth skin of another animal touches me. It feels like sandpaper, a strange closeness to how it felt the last month when I wasn't alone in my head.

When I look into the depths of the water below the lonely pier, my face accuses me of tired anger and surprise. Below it, a fin moves, and a lithe, sharp body starts circling my feet again.

The shark is as long as most of my body, and mostly grey. It circles me again until I put my hand in the water and touch it. It glides under my hand like a smooth cat, back of its head first, until my hand touches its back and runs over its fin. It chafes on my fingertips. But I had it worse.

A silver and black eye stares at me, unblinking, and my hand rubs over the sharkskin again. I'm not afraid. I feel them, and they know that I do.

Another big, grey body appears below the pier, and they swirl around me. They rub on my legs and let me touch them, softly first, demanding later. They get closer and closer, until I need both my hands to pet them.

Some people stay as far away on the water. Asher Thany and the returned Marinos squeeze at the corner of the pier.

My feet freeze in the cold water, the breeze ruffles me. But I keep sitting on my spot, watching the sun wander.

At least my cousin doesn't fear the creatures. He strides over the pier, boots heavy, back arched, eyes taking in the fins that break the surface.

The shark sinks deeper again, snout rubbing on my leg again.

"You're still here."

"I just came back."

"Welcome back, then, cousin."


	11. 11: Sidestep

_sidestep_

_\- to bypass, evade_

_-to move out of the way: avoid_

* * *

**_I_** stay at the pier with Ptolemus for a while until the shark fins disappear completely under the water. Naturally, he doesn't just put off his boots and hangs his feet inside, but he sits down next to me. Our shoulders brush, and it feels as chafing as the sharkskin to my strained muscles.

The wind ruffles in a soft cool blow over our faces and hair. The constant closeness to heat and fire in the last days has made my hair brittle and broken. It is an uneasy, tangled mess. His is the same as always. It reminds me of runt's fur, the same, sleek, silver coloration in the brisk sunshine that falls in stray rays down.

_I miss the dogs. I shouldn't, but I really do. _

"Don't tell anyone I lost my cool last night," I ask, closing my eyes and taking another deep breath. "I just don't like being touched at my throat, it rubbed me off the wrong way. There is nothing more to it."

His face twists a little, grimacing, and a silent, foul question forms in a cloud around us as dark as my swarms. It's unspoken since the day he chased off Samson in the hallway after the coup, him and his sister making me sit in some safe, small niche of space, eyes half-closed until my father picked me up.

"Just promise me you won't tell anyone you had to carry me," I insist. "People already think the worst. They don't need to know I am weak."

"I won't tell anyone," he promises, easy enough to believe. "That wouldn't help you or me."

"True." To deflect any following questions, I give his arm a stiff pat with my flat hand. He let's it be. "How are you doing? We usually don't get to talk about anything. I am not the only person that almost died last month."

"I'm fine," he lies with the same deflection. "Yesterday. When you screamed about-"

My face grimaces before I stay flat and without any visible damage. "It was nothing. I was having a nightmare. I was panicking. I told you. I'm scared of failing again. Your mother would not look at me again if she knew I was not able to handle myself."

If the pier would just start to shake and waver, it would be a proper metaphor for this conversation. But she is his mother, and he knows I don't lie now, at least. It's the only reason he doesn't just walk away. He asks rhetoric questions. He isn't stupid. It worked with Evangeline before. It works now. I dodge any question for my babbling about_ missed opportunities_.

"Oh, I almost forgot. You're going to get married."

A ship horn flings through the air somewhere in the distance, and it sounds like another set of funeral bells coupled with my too innocent words. Not a rigged alarm, but a bitter reminder and dry ironic, bellowing echo.

He doesn't fall for my distraction this time while he shifts his body, arms on his legs.

"As someone with experience on that matter," I tell him and move my feet forth and back to conceal my body getting stiff at the sheer mention, maybe just as reaction or reflex. "You could have ended up with someone less pleasant than Elane at least. That's worth explicitly more than it seems like."

Not that I am _too_ fond of Elane. But she means something, in this strange way people mean something to me because other people care. And at least she listened to me, keeping an eye out. Though I suppose that was for selfish reasons as much as public appearances.

I don't like the grave narrowed eyes I receive, the same expression, the same sniffing as before, at the mention of my throat. So I swing the topic around before he can ask me anything.

"I wasn't _just_ talking about my arrangements. Stop. I know what you are thinking. I can see it on your face. I shouldn't have told you." I shake my head in weak protest this time, but I only earn a set of trenchant eyebrows.

"The whisper has a death wish, he never knows when to stop."

"Oh, I don't disagree. He knows no subtlety. But let's be honest. I was never going to marry anyone of substance. My status only got elevated very recently." And if that isn't the terrifying truth. Never married anyone that was not second graded. And with megalomanic ambition or a complete lack of it. "But as I said. It is not about me. Evangeline can't choose as well. It's official again, I guess. I was busy the last days."

Marrying Maven Calore isn't something I would wish for. Gratuitously being thrown into the continuation of a betrothal to a throne, because that is her place, she was born and raised to be Queen. Atara was rightfully yelling that into the world, it is a matter of fact.

His jaw clenches and untightens in a harsh motion before he speaks. "It was to be expected after the last week."

Of course, he is right. We don't talk about the bowl. We don't talk about Naercy. We press the days in shuddering alarm of gunshots and hunts together. And I only admire the stability that stands behind his eyes, he doesn't scream or panic. And I can't either. I have to stop being weak. I am a scorpion. I don't have the _capacity_ for this emotional mess. I can't afford it.

The water turns unsteady and whirls in excitement and hidden pressure around me, the sharks are still turning.

"Still. Keep your eyes sharp. The usual. I'll do the same when I get home." The last words are razors digging into the inside of my mouth. "I'd love to say we wouldn't need to protect her from anything less than an army, but every corner in Whitefire is as dangerous as a trench, so better stick together."

And that is the last of it. I give his arm another pat. This time, he holds the outside of my fingers when they linger over the fabric. Not long enough to make me hate it.

We tune our mouths into thin, uplifting lines. Take a breath. Then, when the sharks are gone, so are we.

No one comes to get me, not as they did after the assault on the Macanthos. No manacles. No more guards than the two I already encountered. They stand in silent, frustrated unison, and it is clear that they don't want to wait in a hallway and watch a woman sleep.

Three days after the attempt to trap and catch any personae non gratae, the lines not on the hunt are thinned out, with the little surviving groups from the streets and the control center on top of ocean hill keeping Harbor Bay in check. Even if I was to be arrested, it would probably go by quietly.

_You'll disappear and no one will ever know what happened to Daliah Viper, the merry widow. And no one will care._

The threat holds merit. It makes me shiver.

And there is always a chance I step into the Viper mansion in West Archeon and throw myself out of a window. Or shoot myself in the head.

I pull the broken hair on my head into the resemblance of a braid.

Combined with my pale face hulled in scars and my plain, dark clothes, I don't look like a hunter, an heir, or a scorpion ready to sting.

For a fleeting reflection, I resemble the nightmare mirror of another woman. Someone that loved me, hated me and died. Then I just look like I came out of the cell last year, and that is even worse.

My flat fingers and palms rub the scars. The skin of my neck clamps, the scar tissue tingles. Asher said my head was pooling in silver blood, and I was lucky the cloud of insects made it easy to locate me.  
Heavy hits, but I had it worse. No broken jaw and spine at least this time.

As weird as it is, I can't remember anything except the dreams after blacking out. The first time, the unbearing pain of being swallowed and dying kept me awake. Nothing this time.

Maybe I am just getting used to it. I am, after all, very hardy when it comes to pain.

One last look to the closed tight windows and the empty cage under the sheet, and I take my leave.

No one comes to arrest me. No one cares. Only me and my trusty guards, catching up on an alley and moving out of Harbor Bay.

And then, I don't even get to meet up anyone in charge. I only receive a paper again, in haste.

New instructions to track the escapees. If it is because my cousin has put in a word, or if it is for the fact that in the end we all failed, from soldier to king, who knows.

_You'll disappear and no one will ever know what happened to Daliah Viper, the merry widow. And no one will care._

The backlash will come. It is just a matter of time.

I expect the transport. Somewhere to the outskirts, into less populated territory, filled with the same mud and rubble that any red village has to offer, standing between trees or on the edges of nothingness. It's a probably distance for a small group of people in a few days. Even if everyone is still unsure what kind of transportation was used this time. They didn't escape through the water, at least, or so is the most common agreement.

I receive a pack of chained, black dogs, drool and froth around their nuzzles and chaps. One lonely figure stands in the middle of them, dressed in the same black and green patches as all the Vipers in uniforms usually do. I recognize the face filled with indifference and a small dotted birthmark under his heavy-lidded green eyes. They're freckled in brown, and they're as thoughtful as unreadable.

My guards hiss and sizzle behind me, but they are quiet, even if they look very closely at us.

"Hadrien," I say, arching my back and trying to stand straight.

"Lady Viper."

It feels good to hear that. Like an ointment for dried out skin, refreshing.

"Your father sends his regards. And my father sends me." If he rolled his eyes at that, I wouldn't be surprised. Hector has shown a certain set of blank slated, no nonsense attitude, and Hadrien at least has already proven to do what I tell him. Pragmatic people have their uses. They at least don't act out wrapped in emotions. But as reasonable as it is, I don't trust any Viper. Just as his father, he may be useful. That's all I can yet tell.

I watch the dogs. They're not my dogs. They don't get to sleep in my bed, or live in a house to be coddled and paraded around as shining shields and at display. They aren't my pack. But they will do.

The chains rattle loosely on the harnesses.

"Let them go."

He shrugs it off, but doesn't try to take them over. Instead, he just steps aside, and the black patched bodies surround me, alerted. Dark and brown, yellow and black, they watch me.

I stretch out both my hands. The muscles under their fur move.

"Sit."

The bodies stop, ears flat. Sit down on their spots.

I lull them into my control as if I was the chain on their harnesses.

"Good. We won't need those."

I free them off the leashes, and they sit in line, pushed by only my emotions and control.

"Good," I repeat, sniffing in ten noses at the scents floating around. "May we proceed?"

"Lead the way," Hadrien shrugs again, holding his belt filled with deadly weaponry.

And I do. We don't find anything the next eight hours, and the name on the list, the person I was send for, is already gone. But again. I lead. That's what matters. 


	12. 12: Twinge

_twinge _  
_-a sharp unpleasant sensation usually felt in some specific part of the body _  
_-tingle, throb_

* * *

**_T_**he name I have received is the one of another red-blooded anomaly, but he is gone when I reach his old home.

Questions asked don't retrieve any more results.

Word says that it is the same with the remaining one in Harbor Bay. Escaped from whatever confinement was planned. All in vain because they escape over and over again.

I spend a whole day in the dirt and dust, rummaging through the reminders of the villages for a trail.

Hoping perhaps they are just hiding somewhere in one meager basement. The red people in Archeon and any bigger city wear a piece of cloth around their arms to make their status even more clear. In the villages, the ruined and broken rest of rubble and bits of finer houses reserved for trade or guards posted, you wouldn't need to see any cloth. They all look the same to me in their blatant state of misery.

The faces are scared , the eyes downcast. The children are thin, the remaining parents just as hollow. The absence of anyone above a certain age is blatantly clear, even here. Those that have been conscripted, last year when the age range was still higher, or this month when it was set to 15. Collected like chicken and perched together to be shipped away.

The dogs sniff around the reminders of the buildings. We barge through doors without warning, and people bend to me and avert their gaze. In tow, I carry a strange pack of animals and people.

Hadrien is absently following my lead. But who can tell what goes on behind his bleak face. He rubs his nose from time to time and has one hand on a weapon, and another on one dog in soft command.

The banshee and the stoneskin haven't left their post. Looking for me to keep my tongue, or not step out of line. But at least they are polite, and they accept me leading with the begrudging mentality of soldiers. Their ground teeth and stiff bodies remind me of my dead husband and Ellyn every time I take a look, and it sits in my neck. The truth about the corpses and the war, and that I am one of them.

Samson was right._ I am playing good soldier. _And my reports are declining any victory. It would be humiliating if I didn't catch the drift that no one is successful.

I vow to keep that thought inside me and bury it, to make it hard to see for any mind reader that might try. He doesn't need to know I concede to the fear and think about him at all.

I also vow to never return to Harbor Bay. I leave my weakness like the dogs shed fur on their pillows. But with selfish, glowing content, I keep the moment on the pier, a second to breathe and talk to someone that has become a stranger over the years.

I come back home with my entourage and new, fresh scars that carry a tinge of frustration.

It is a silent return. No victory bells and voices rise over rooftops. Our group flees the grimy air by the sea and the dirty villages.

No one waits for me. I don't get picked up , not even by my father.  
That is when a cramp starts coiling my lower stomach.

It explains why I behave so wrong. So emotional. Why my skin does not fit me.  
I haven't felt that kind of pain for a long time. I didn't bleed in imprisonment or resituating with my family.

My period has chosen the worst possible time to return.

Dread accompanies the irritating pain and the feeling of too much blood flowing without my control with every step and every hasty move I take.

Calpurnia and my father had a talk about my cycle, possible children. And while I don't ever plan on getting pregnant, least of all from Samson, the lack of my cycle was reassuring.  
It meant I could forget about precautions for a while. I'll have to do something against the pain and care for...well, me.

This is unwanted. But when isn't it? What woman wants to have excruciating pain and discomfort once a month?

I keep that discomfort to myself as I move to West Archeon. Since it is early afternoon, the house is mostly empty. The backyard and small conservatory are empty. The kennel is bustling in the regular movement of four-legged animals. My dogs, the big grey and brown slobbering bodies, as well as my father, are nowhere to be seen.

Hadrien vanishes in the hallways after a courteous goodbye. He has been as silent as me. I will need to press on and interrogate him properly, it seems, he is not much of a talker. More old and new papers wait for me. I try to catch up on it.

And sitting or lying and reading is easier now that I feel the constant pounding from my lower body.

I still need to get a red boy back and out of trouble. And I want Calpurnia's whereabouts and head. She has hidden by now. We'll need to neutralize her. As well as the aspect of Samson not around the house as I thought he would.

The contempt and bad thoughts surround me like an invisible layer of mud thick on my skin . Even when I shower and rub the sweat and pain off my skin. I see the bruises that have bloomed, feel my tense muscles. It doesn't stop the inconvenient feeling of being dirty.

The next morning moves by like haven't come back from a strange long absence and bring new scars with me. I get a brief meeting with some servants early, then a shadow of Arven creeping through to leave, but not my mother. She just sleeps into late morning and makes herself comfortable wherever. Since my birth ruined her career as a musical genius, she prefers to stay in her practice room or with her entourage.

Every day I stay in the abandoned room and the split house, I remember why I preferred to either wander around with my father or stay with Larentia.  
My body bloats in my clothes. I wish someone would hit me in the head instead of this particular pain. I'm pretty sure my heels will just break on the floor. It's a wonder my feet even fit in.

My guards are still around. They catch me in the foyer. Hadrien is there as well, uninterested in conversation with them. He has a pair of spectacles on his nose that have half slid down to his nostrils. He scribbles into a small, leather-bound book. The pen clicks once before he snaps the book shut. The loud pang of paper and words is the only sound in the silence.

"Where is everyone?" I ask. My voice wavers unwelcome.

"There is a meeting at ten," he answers without giving me a _real_ answer. "I was told to wait for you and make sure you get there."

I give him another long look. "So you'll go with me today to the palace."

"It seems like it." He bends his head slowly to one side, half in thought. "Those two as well?"

The smaller one with the small eyes in a face as sour pale as any Viper can be, pounces from one leg to the other. Soft-spoken, but not very friendly, I don't even know his full name yet. I'll have someone run some background check on the ticks Maven has put on me.

Asher is the one speaking up, the more amicable one of the two. He reaches over most of us in broad-shouldered disinterest.

"Until we receive other orders, we're here to stay."

I can't dismiss that. So I drag them with me as Hadrien and I make our way to Whitefire.

"We never really met," I try to provoke any kind of reaction when we have settled and move out. I feel naked without big creatures around me. "Even though I know you and your fathers' faces."

"You grew up in the capital and rift, our branch is from the other side of a lowlife province," Hadrien answers. He pushes his glasses up again, blinking behind the construction when his heavy-lidded eyes focus again.

I huff out a breath. "I know that."

He only repeats some chewed up information. "We're responsible for the established trade routes and transports. Even with all the technical prowess, animals are still useful. And my father bred dogs for years as well."

"Did you breed my uncle's dogs?"

His face opens a crack, eyebrows shifting. "Not personally. I studied abroad most of the time. They were one of the last litters of their kind. Others are more effective and easier to train."

I have seen him handle dogs. He is good with them. "What did you study, and why did you stop?"

"I'm...well...our family deals in animals. I studied their biology, genetics," he stumbles over it a little. Then he pushes the glasses up again, more a nervous touch than necessary this time. "I should have married a girl. I didn't want to, so my father cut my studies. Then last month happened. Now we are all here."

"Now we are all here," I repeat absent, staring at the complex across the square. I'm back in Whitefire. I'm back, and everything whirls around too fast. Another cramp squeezes my body together. With a snarl, I push the stairs upwards.

My father's chair is empty on the round table when I arrive in the same room that I had an earlier meeting last week. It feels like a lot more than just five days.

Time is such a weird concept. A month in this marriage felt like an eternity and dying felt like a dream. Fighting feels like a rush, but still the days since the coup and before stretch.

I stare at Ptolemus across the table, try to convey some sort of greeting. Apparently, since no one so far has mocked me for being weak, he has held word. I expected nothing else. Viper for Samos, we hold our end of the deal. We served together and we saved each other. I want to keep that in my shriveled heart and cramping body. Then my eyes fling back to the threshold where I left inconspicuous in thought looking Hadrien and the guards.

"Am I too early or too late?" I ask. Provos is the only other one greeting me, and the only one answering now.

"Well, Volo Samos has been preoccupied with something. Your father excuses himself, Lady Viper," Provos says, wrinkled hand tapping on the table. "He felt unwell the last days. And he didn't look very good."

"One Viper brother had a weak heart, the other has a weak stomach," a voice behind me ponders.

"And his daughter has been released from murder charges," another adds.

I don't get to snap around to either Osanos and whoever else of the lot is at it again. Ptolemus does the job for me. He just moves his hand, a fist curled together under the table. Something I assume as metal creaks before a thudding, shuddering sound rings through the council room.  
Provos looked mildly uninterested before. He tries to hide his amusement and annoyance now.

"Oh no," I say, taking my seat, legs scraping disharmonic over the polished floor. "There must have been a loose screw."

I receive one long glare from Osanos. One more from Macanthos. And Iral would never say anything to change this.

"May we proceed?" Provos asks, it sounds like he doesn't really want to proceed. He is clearly entertained, but a duty is a duty, and so he reins the unruly children into the reason we have gathered. "Someone ought to get him a new chair too. We don't want you standing the whole meeting, that would be...laughable inappropriate."

It is like walking on hot coals, but luckily my months in disfavor have taught me to act humble. It comes in handy if you have to brush the egos of older men in particular.

Still, being the only Viper feels wrong. And I left my animals behind today. Not even knowing where the dogs or my father make me nervous. Worrying for people is bad for my mental strength.

It doesn't last long. Half the talk is about the losses in the last weeks, another fruitless attempt of playing catch with rebels. A scuffle about damages. Everyone is very quiet about Habor Bay, though. Nothing new comes out of the meeting. Everyone keeps what they know close to their vests. I watch Iral with interest. I'll get to them later. I need to figure out how to proceed.  
Hector and Hadrien have done a good job in supporting my father though at least here in the capital and in the general matters.

"Thanks for that," I whisper as soon as the ordeal has passed. Hadrien keeps a distance between himself and Ptolemus. It is the second time I thank him this week. This can't become a habit.

"No one gets to talk to family this way," he answers simply, and we both chew on that, engraved and marked into our souls. We part ways on the corridor. It's a busy day. It gets only more hectic.


	13. 13: Slink

_slink_

_-to move about in a sly or secret manner _

* * *

**_T_**he next day isn't easier or more pleasant. My guards don't dare to wander in the mansion, so at least here I can roam or stay however I want. And since I have received no new name, and no more staking out, I gladly take the time to recover.

I won't be much of assistance to anyone if I keep wailing over my period. Yes, sure, I don't want children. I don't want this. Precautions need to be locked back in place. Something needs to be arranged.

I wake up again unharmed and in full control, plagued by the nightmare of being able to conceive a child. So I also inquire about someone else and his whereabouts.  
Samson has vanished from the face of the world.

He hasn't been to the Viper mansion.

He hasn't shown his face in Whitefire.

I could think he only avoids me. But even when we clash, he usually gives me some sort of order and demands things from me. My fear to be replaced and murdered could almost be laughable when he isn't even around.

When I start to sniff after his clear absence, no one that usually gets pestered by his arrogance has seen him. I make sure to check that very thoroughly. The first and easiest to ask, of course, is my father.

I need to talk to him anyway about money and other things. So I renew the knot of my hair pulled together and make my way to the study.

Even from below the hallway, the dogs notice me and my pattern of steps. I can hear Runt and One Ear yowl and bark in excitement, and I feel them through the wall. When I stand in front of the door, they scratch and jump on the other side.

As soon as the handle is pulled, they flood over me with joy. I scratch their heads, dodge their slobbering tongues on my face, hug them.

The long fur tickles my nose. Their heads fit on the crook of my arm and my stomach, they press themselves against me. For a moment, I don't even care it feels inconvenient.

Battle Scar's backside hangs half out from under the desk. He has squeezed himself below my father's legs instead of lying on the cushion. He slowly greets me, then returns to his space under the table.

"Good day," my father greets me. He looks as pale and sickly worried as he always does, but his hands tighten around the papers they hold. In the light of day, I can see the sheen of sweat gathering in the rim of his collar, just below the greying hair. It's not hot in the room. The wind is even cold as it sweeps through the ripped open windows.

I just came to ask questions. But. Some part in me wants to ensure he isn't going to drop dead. Vanish from my life as silently as he has returned in the last months.

I round up the table and sit on the edge, only a hand width away from his figure on the chair. The dogs follow and stay around us in a wall of protective attention. But are also not opposed to receive more pets from me. At least they missed me as much as I missed them.

"Are you avoiding the Vipers?" I ask. "You and Hector seemed to be swell friends."

For a moment, he smiles, that amused tug of his lips that he always has when I make a joke, between us. The amused gleam looks weak in his sunken eyes. "No. But you are doing well on your own, maybe you don't need me anymore."

That only reminds me of the day the paperwork for inheritance got signed. I don't appreciate the doomed way that he speaks about it.

"People in the meetings don't like me very much," I remark. "Did you hear about the chairs mysteriously breaking yesterday?"

Now that makes the smile grow. "How strange that it was only the chairs of the people insulting you."

"So strange," I agree. "I should send my cousin a gift basket for entertaining us and taking care of them. I don't know how you handle it without breaking their bones. It is frustrating. They won't see me as anything but..." I swallow on the words, they burn in my throat. "The merry widow."

"Despite that, you _are_ Lady Viper. But give a dog a bad name and hang him," My father explains.  
The image of a red-blooded boy on a noose blinks into my head. Runt growls low at my feet. Battle Scar and One Ear's whimpers pierces through the wood.

My father rubs his big head with yellow eyes that press against his leg, and the tail starts wagging again. The harsh sounds of the tails hitting the wooden desk are the only disturbance of the relative peaceful silence.

"Some of them never liked me, they won't like you, " he continues, hand moving up. He rubs his temple, blinking heavy. "It won't change. Respect comes a long, long way, Daliah, you know all about it. As long as you don't wave a gun in front of their faces as you did with your husband, you will be fine."

"Speaking about him." I scratch Runt's back with playful force and she shudders in joy. "Has Samson bothered you the last days?"

"I haven't seen him since the night the silver forces went to stake out the ruins and seize the traitors and the scarlet guard," he informs me. "He doesn't tell me everything he does. Just as I avoid to tell him some things of my own. We are not friends, Daliah, we are necessary associates, as far as I care."

That is not the answer I wanted to hear. I want to tell him what I have seen, what I have done, but nothing comes out of my mouth. I value my tongue too much.

"Are you alright?" I whisper and lean forward. It pokes me in my stomach with the constant, dripping bad feeling, but I ignore it. My father has it worse. "Provos said you looked sick the other day."

"I'm fine, just old and tired, Daliah." His green eyes are pointed towards the ground when he sighs. He lies to me so blatantly it makes me angry. "And Provos likes to act quiet and after all rules and etiquette. But he loves gossip and scandals more than anything if they don't concern him."

I think about his amused face and the half-hidden smile when the chair fell creaking under the small manipulation from a metal bender. His reaction and my fathers aren't that different in that regard. My eyebrows draw together.

"We all like entertainment from time to time. Do you really trust him?"

My father leans back in the chair that means everything to us. The high seat of this house, and the place that I will defend with my life if necessary. "He has been my friend for twenty years, and as far as I am concerned, he won't backstab anyone that doesn't stand against his house. Provos isn't one you need to fear, even if he could break all your bones with a twitch of his hand. He is still working for the crown, as all of are."

_We all play along because we can't do anything else._

The crown.

I puff out a breath.

Isn't that an interesting way to say that he sits there quietly . Serves a queen and her son that have taken the throne after the brutal murder of his father? As always, my father avoids direct connotation to names. He called Maven Calore a boy. He knew Tiberias Calore well enough to tell stories about his dead wife on a late night , flatter around him in old tall tales about war. The king and my father were just men.

Men that knew each other well. Just as Provos, given his long years in service. But none of them even remarked something. They don't seem fazed beyond their need for self-preservation and the caution that they displayed on the day after the old king died.

Poor old Tiberias Calore.

His older son, and the one from Coriane Jacos nonetheless, on the run, and he already forgotten. A mocking footnote in a speech and slander.

I guess that wasn't the legacy he thought he would have.

Not that I have any mercy for the burner prince on the run. I don't have a grain for sympathy. And besides that. I was never royal. I was never worth much before I stepped up the ladder in bloodshed and deceive.

"I want you to get another opinion, and another Skonos healer involved," I demand. "I want you to stay back and rest for the next days."

"Very well, Lady Viper." One more smile in his pale, sunken face.

"No. I mean it. Father." I stretch my hand out and touch his. It shakes and quivers with a slight tremor, and I don't like that more than the lies about his health.

"Was there something else you wanted to talk about?"

"It can wait," I whisper and snatch my fingers away from his grip.

* * *

Right back in Whitefire, I bind in Sentinel Viper. After Calpurnia has gone off too, I have started to implore my cousin with the mask as well. Sentinels, after all, has another eye on Whitefire. Even if I am painfully aware the queen can just play me and command them as well.

Still. No trace of Samson. It is a little terrifying to think about the butcher traveling anywhere in Norta with the knives in his head sharpened. Ready to purge, ready to leech information out of heads, ready to murder. And I have no clue where he has gone and when he will come back for me.

People disappearing from the radar is a reoccurring theme. Willingly or not. It adds to the suspension in the air.

It keeps coming back to me as I rummage around the palace and wait with bated breath and disgruntled patience for _the king_ to give me some new orders.

I round a corner, for once not following Ptolemus anywhere. I have left the guards behind too, just for a moment. That is when I feel like someone has pricked me, watching eyes boring in the back of my head.

I don't stop walking. But I keep away from the wing that holds personal quarters and a jar with a spider. Instead, I just start walking to an exit, as if I was heading home in the brim of orange evening light. My face mirrors in a window when I stop as if I want to ponder over the progress of the repairs.

They have at least cleaned the Square and work on the rest.

The steps following me are very silent. My ears wouldn't pick them up.

The palace is infested with a mass of my bugs and spiders by now. They crash against the walls like tidal waves if I want them to. The biggest specimens easily pick up the silent movements vibrating through the corridor behind me. The spiders sway in the air circulating and brim with the electricity and static. I try to blend the sensation out in favor of finding out who follows me today.

Naturally, spies are everywhere in this environment. Many of us have it in our silver blood to stalk and wait.

_As I never tire to say- predators. _

Sonya wears no sparkly dress today.

It seems all the ladies have sobered up a little in terms of color. Most of them still look too good in black. And for some, nothing much changes.

Even her nails have lost the gem coated glitter on top. They are still sharp as her fingers wrap around the biggest spider hanging from the wall.

We have done this before. The last time my spiders found her, she was curious. Now she wraps it up more tightly and my sight gets obscured by shadows and warm, dark fingers. It only gets smaller and smaller, a cage made of flesh. Walls caving like a trap. I slip out of the eight eyes and legs back into my own body.

I didn't like the way Salin looked at me. Now maybe my chance to find out why.

"Drop the spider," I tell her, still feeling the tight grip and sharp nails on my own skin in a shiver. "I prefer my creatures to be unharmed. Even if they aren't specifically bred for me."

Her eyes are unreadable, mostly. Not angry, at least.

"Please," I add. My throat seems to explode when I use that word.

She complies. With a quick move, she opens her palm and drops my spider. As if she was throwing a petal. The spider glides a foot through the air on a silken string and then gently lands on the swift legs. It scurries away, into the safety of a high corner, away from us.

"I don't appreciate being followed," I tell her. With the heels today, I am at least not feeling too small against her smooth silhouette stretching before me in the corridor. "You were good though. Very silent."

"Clearly not when you have already noticed me." She smiles a trained smile, not the gritted teeth I call the same.

"I got a few years experience on you," I answer. As well as a decent amount of paranoia. But she doesn't need to know that. "What is this about? Did I step on someone's toes?"

She still smiles at me. Her lips aren't the same intense red anymore, a more muted color, just as the rest of her outfit, to blend in even better now.

"I was just hoping to catch you alone." Her charm is lost on me. She knows that. And she lies. This has to be about something else.

"For sure," I scoff softly. "You can be happy that my husband isn't around, he wouldn't ask."

The threat ricochets relatively useless. She doesn't even move her eyebrows. For a second she reminds me very much of Ara, and I feel something bubbling in my stomach. It is for the best they never know I helped to get her removed.

"If you don't tell me, I will have to wait and see, and you know I love to do that."

"I was just curious," she shrugs it off. "You aren't that revered, still. But you've had a social rise the last weeks."

"Some things have changed," I answer, tugging my face into an acceptable half-smile, gifting it to corpses and lost members of all of our families. "For better or worse. We'll have to see."

"You're so very angry Lady Viper," Sonya sways past me, brushing my arm with her hand. Since I only tolerate touch in some circumstances and from a handful of people, I don't appreciate it now very much. The hand is soft, and it doesn't smash me like it could have smashed the spider. I am still on the verge of reacting aggressive. "You ought to let go of some of your stress from time to time. But at least you don't faint anymore."

"Your worry is heartwarming," I answer. " I'd tell you to greet the rest of your family, but I see them tomorrow at the discourse in the council room. Have a nice day, Sonya."

And with that, we part. We stalk off heels clicking in opposite directions. We act like we didn't just catch each other spying.

* * *

Since I have nothing to find as of yet, I just decide to visit Maven Calore as a spider that night. He is back, I know it, it wasn't very common knowledge at all that he went to Harbor Bay and returned. Given the delicacy of the situation, it wouldn't make sense at all. It was a secret, a surprise. An ambush. And it failed. I'm curious if he is crushed by that or has plans to proceed.

Like most nights, even when not busy with something, he is as wide awake as I am. He's always a little tousled and stirs in his room, sometimes even pacing like a caged animal.

When the spider legs tap against the clean glass, he is already nearby. This time, he only lifts the lid and lowers the glass. The spider hastily steps out of it, on the table. He doesn't pick it up. Instead, he just sits down on his own bed again. The spider observes everything calmly.

Nothing much has changed in the blank space of the room. I recognize now that this is not the blankness of someone clearing out things. Not like my mother abandoning my room and leaving only little remainders of my youth behind. This is the clean slate of someone unable to really have too many facets of himself or at least isn't expressing whatever interest he has. the spider in the cupboard almost counts as decor.

"I wondered when you'd drop by. The last days were not as successful as planned, but never worry, Lady Viper, you did good enough to stay alive," he says. He talks for himself as much as he talks to me. "Ptolemus at least is smitten to have you back. Maybe him not dying and you saving him did have a few perks after all. He clearly cares for you."

It is as if he just wants to fill the quiet emptiness that lurks around the room. Not that his face gives anything away. But his voice does, at least to me. I can recognize that because I was plagued by someone in my mind, even if not for the same amount of time.

The spider jumps boldly on the mattress. It doesn't make any sound and doesn't sink in as it softly creeps over his foot up and settles on his drawn-up leg.

"I'll have something again that may interest you, in a few days," he informs the spider sitting on his knee. "If you don't ask questions. And do your job."

The spider shakes at that, a nod of recognition.

"It's more pleasant to work with you than I assumed, Lady Viper."

_It's because I don't talk back. It is also because I know what you are. And because of that, you don't even need to lie anymore. _

The spider's pincers are yearning to sink into his pale skin.

"Since you are so invested in listening to what I have to say. Just between us." He smiles, thin, a shadow of something amused. "You're having dinner with my mother and Samson's father in two days, I hear."

The spider legs freeze. The hair stands up on both our bodies, mine, and the spiders, in alarm.

"It was meant as a surprise, see it as a gift I give you this information."

What a gift. I'm not reassured at all.


	14. 14: Set

_callous_

_-being hardened and thickened_

_**-**__ having calluses_

**_-_**_ feeling no emotion_

**_-_**_feeling or showing no sympathy for others _**_:_**_ hard-hearted_

* * *

**_O_**n one side of the Viper halls, animals scream and feet move through the hallways. On the other side, my mother already prepares for the usual nightly activities.

I catch a whiff of white clothes on every floor as I move down.

One is just the usual stilting, gaunt man that always finds his way to my mother's room, and the other is a worrisome procession of Skonos.  
I leave the dogs behind, scattering my upturned collar with bolt leaping spiders. In black and white, hair, equipped with strong pincers, they brandish and protect me, as always.  
And then the time is up, and I have to follow suit after the invitation.  
Like every house in West Archeon, this one is big.

It feels morbidly frigid in itself as if it is shivering.

When I step inside, one of my spiders drops down onto the floor and rushes over the side. It brings hasty distance between me and it.

My eyes burn, but I try to assess the silent room around me.

It reminds me of our house with the steep staircase I left behind in Summerton. The same absence of warmth in any preened pristine decor. Cold and untouched and without a trace of dust.

Whoever took care of this has decided the other one is wrong I came alone.  
The uneasiness rests on my spine like Samson's long fingers. Heron said I was a Merandus. She is wrong, of course. But it would help now.

The spiders shiver and tremble with every breath I take in walking.  
Maven thought he did me a favor telling me his mother would show up. Right now, that feels like a threat more than simple knowledge, even if it helps to avoid surprises. There is literally nothing in my line of power I can do, little I know, and even less I can do to subvert anything when she chooses to talk to me.

If my teeth grind on each other even more, they'll make unpleasant crunching sounds.  
If my spine arches back even more, it will break again. I just try to be taller than I am. Like usual. But even more desperate.

My stomach turns and twists in bizarre knots again, eating itself, as much as I want to hide it, I'm sure it's a rather futile effort in a place filled with mind readers.

If I get any more nervous, I will puke over the carpet. I want to run away. My head can't wrap around the fact that I have returned unharmed only to step inside this nest of frosted death.  
So I just hold it together, for now, rubbing my sweaty palms on the back of my jacket before resting them at my sides. Even now, there are around four to five pairs of visible eyes watching me.

Fingers feeling after my critters, I take a long breath. The smaller spiders have long vanished in the cracks between the floorboards, sitting somewhere on the hinges of doors and in the sharp corners. As well lit as the house is, as light as the colors are, and as sterile and cold as everything feels, I doubt they will survive tonight if I leave them here. At least they are unpleasant to catch, venomous and fast. A few of the remaining crawl over my ear almost in reassurance, brown and black specks of eight-legged friends, settling in the cracks of my clothes and under my collar. They tickle my skin.

The biggest one, a bold jumping spider in black adorned with white dots and stripes along the abdomen and rear, slides over a curtain in the room I am in. The others are like armor on my shoulders and front. They move lazily. As any of the bigger specimens, they can jump and see better than the smaller kinds. The bold jumper on the curtain disappears above the trimmed, wound rod of the curtains.

For a moment, I forget where I am. I am just a spider, and being a spider is, as I have elaborated with multiple people, my preferred state of being.  
A spider has silk to coat a lair and food in. A spider doesn't get self-conscious. A spider hides or eats. A spider has cold blood.

The eyes of the bold jumper focus through the colored void of swirling air and moving forms. It stares down on the unmoving figure of myself, black from heels over pants and the black, upturned collar of my shirt and jacket.

And then the eyes that take in movement see the blurring blue form at the edge of the foyer, at the corner of my own vision, just slowly moving forward. If it wasn't the blond hair smoothed back from a sharp face or the blue ridiculous leather, it would be the stinging of the cologne that always haunts me when I linger in too close proximity to Samson.

My neck cracks when I snap around.

I am reminded of my panic attack in Harbor Bay, and I want to scream and run.  
Instead, I stand very, very still. It doesn't make me invisible, but it helps to ground my vision. He only creeps closer. I can feel him worming inside my brain, it hurts like shivering fins rubbing against my skin. We study each other in the lights raining in white snow down on us.

At least, that's almost funny, he looks horrible for his standards. Lassitude and debility from all the jumping back and forth, maybe, or maybe just because he didn't get enough sleep in the last week in between ruining other people's life.

"Did you lose your voice?" he asks, almost amused.

My body cramps together in the remainder of my bleeding pain and my emotional rawness. I don't feel as bloated, but I still feel the swing of it. It doesn't make me whiny, it is like someone has slapped me, and grey anger blinds me a second.

_I hope you die horribly and rot away on the side of a street like a roadkill, Samson Merandus._

That night in Harbor Bay won't be the status quo- I hate his presence too much to surrender. That is what fuels me. That is the reason I don't run now. My hate fuels me.

"I was already dusting off my veil," I snap at him, unpleasantly surprised to see him. Of course, when one is here, the other would be too. It's in his nature of bootlicking at her feet. What better opportunity than some dinner? "But you're still alive."

"And you're too early. Stop infesting the house with your vermin."

I lift my chin. _"Try_ to stop me."

He lifts his chin as well. "Maybe later when we're alone."

Maybe his family wouldn't appreciate more bruises and mental cuts at their dinner table. Maybe they won't care.

It's the four walls and the time spend alone you need to worry about. My sleepless nights and panicked fever days in the house with the crooked stairs can tell you about it.  
He offers me his right, mouth tugging at the corner into something that isn't a smile. It feels as cool as everything else in this house.

I take two steps and only begrudgingly take the arm. "I was anticipating that something took your head off your shoulders when you didn't greet me in my house."

"I've been more than useful, and that is all I will tell you."

It is like walking in the snow. Like every second in the house we shared, and even with shoes and armor this time, I feel like I freeze from the inside. My heart doesn't stop racing too fast in my body.

I'm stiff and rigid. Hostility seeps out of my pores. One pair of blue eyes watches my every mov. My arm squeezes too tightly as we walk, pressing it to his leather-clad side. I dig my nails into the fabric of his sleeve and hope it at least irritates him.

He's the second son of a cousin removed, and not even his older brother or father have the decency to show up, at least not on time. The house holds its breath. It is hushed and scared.

Once or twice, and very, very quietly, servants rustle over a hallway, and a few times I swear to my disillusioned brain that I hear a child talking, then a quiet sobbing cry, merely down the hallway. It doesn't serve my nervous form. I think about the dead children and their blood on my hand at the sun shooting and flinch involuntarily.

My spiders creep over the wall and catch the sound of the slow shrieking pitch in all abstract horror.

Children live in this mansion. At least one of them is very small, probably on the cusp of becoming a monster with the ability to mind read and terrorize others in their whim.

_Whisper brood._

A stream of hostile air leaves my body.

I dislike children in general. I despise the idea of this one even more. This thing that it represents, and the returning fear that I carry with me since the moment I married him.

Calpurnia told me I would be the mother of a terrifying litter of whispers one day.

Samson doesn't even need to read my thoughts on that one, he makes a sound that could be a laugh if it didn't sound like he was choking. I try to blink it off and sneer at him.

He only leads me through the house, ignoring my nails out for his blood. One more time I feel and hear the child speaking somewhere down the hallway. The voice quakes this time, more defiant, but still not discernable. Maybe a boy, but I don't bet on it. When I let go of his arm, he doesn't even look at me. He only leads the way further into the guts of the house and opens a door. If I was to creep into another room though, I know, he would stop me. He didn't take my arm to be friendly. He seizes me.

"Your parents couldn't be bothered? Your father invited me, after all."

He takes that the same as my previous insults and questions.

"I didn't think you were eager to spend time with my family."

"If I get a formal invitation I expect a certain degree of etiquette," I counter, stepping in beside him.

A dining room, clearly, but not as huge or as official as the one in the summer residence I spent the last months in. And not as small as the dining room that always stayed unused in the house with the steep staircase. The table isn't as old as the one in the Viper mansion, and the wood or the floor do not carry the small hints provided by the four-legged inhabitants about their existence. No scratch marks, no hair, no smell, not even a sound beyond the silent steps running through the house. The only mark is the man that sits right to the end of the table. A bruise as blue and blooming as the ones I hide under my jacket.

Samson's father looks a lot like him. The same skeletal , slim frame in sharp edges, if a little less looming and lean. A little grey on the roots of his blond hair, not as much visible as my father in the black, not as wrinkled around the corner of the eyes. He is smoother skinned, but still less stoic, pragmatic, or elegant than most of the older men in my life.

He looks less pretentious in his choice of clothing though, with less leather and more of a simple but well-fitted suit, and a thin, straight mustache where his son is always clean shaven.

"And you would be right to do so," he stands up very slowly, and I feel like I am the red blooded victim tonight. I get encircled by a dangerous pack. "Which is why I asked your husband to fetch you."

"That makes sense," I acknowledge. "So thoughtful of you."

He doesn't smile. He just inspects my scars. If he would put a hand on my chin and ask me to look at my teeth , he would be as obvious. "You look hardened since the last time I saw you at the wedding."

"I have changed since then. We all have."

Still no smile, only the pathological edge of an unmoved colorless upper lip and a quivering pencil-thin mustache above, almost as pale as the skin it fills. Then he sits down again.

I was sure Samson would keep ignoring me. He hasn't been polite beneath the surface in private moments. He is a man that snaps doors shut and invades spaces I occupy, not to ask or accept. In the presence of his father, he has found his manners again. Maybe it is just to control me. He pulls out the chair on the opposite side of his father. Not the seat at the front, that is reserved for the guest of honor.

"Where is the rest of the dear family?" I don't dare to ask for Elara Merandus, cop out for Samson's mother instead. Maybe she won't show up and Maven has fed me another lie to make me scared. If that is the case, I probably will make the spider bite him the next time he lifts it out of the glass.

Samson sits down next to me after I have reluctantly sunken into the chair.

He answers the question with a small wrinkle of his nose. "My family isn't as lazy as all your Vipers, even if it is only half as big. And at least my mother doesn't have the mental capacity of a jellyfish."

A snort escapes me before I can stop it. "I wouldn't dare to disagree with you, for once in my life."

Not that it answers my question. His father answers me instead.

"She is busy with our grandchildren tonight. There was an accident. Samson is right, it's no secret we aren't as big as a house as the Iral's or Samos'."

The topic is sore, it rustles over the ground like a snake in the brushes.

Just as before, I feel disgusted, but this time it is a thing between Samson and his father. My husband looks like I slapped him again, but less composed.

I stare at the wine glass in front of me intently. Then I just grab it and drink as much as I can without choking. It burns down my throat. I haven't eaten today, and I know I will be drunk in no time if I am not careful.

Right now, wedged between the silent eyes that speak a million words of contempt.

_We're degraded weak branched cousins and second sons. I am a widow, he never married in the first place. Probably because no one wanted to lose a daughter to Merandus and to a man with a bloody streak in an arena._

Maybe Calpurnia wasn't the only one nagging at me for not being yet pregnant. Carrying legacy and populate and infest the world with more of them must be in the interest of every whisper. The fact that Samson is as old as he is without a child must have been the nail in the coffin between them.

My heart shrivels together.

I push my chair a bit further away. It scrapes over the carpet and leaves a dirty dent. I'm glad we have at least a wall of glass and porcelain and alcohol between us.

For a moment I want to take the glasses and throw them at both of them, at the wall, and my hands shake before I curl them into fists.

The spiders in the hallway shuffle below a corner. I tug at them and feel vibrations again, more movement.

I sit with my back to the door, but I don't need to look behind me to realize when it opens and the other -self-invited- dinner guest steps in.

When the dogs see me and my father, their ears tilt forwards and they jump up to wait for some command. The same shift rustles over Samson now. He leans forward the door first when she steps in, and then he even stands up to greet her. His father does the same, but less scrambling.

Samson had some admiration left for her in his mind, I am unsurprised by the courteous greeting. Sometimes he proves he isn't a completely uneducated fool when it comes to manners, he must have had teachers like all of us. He shows it tonight.

I only turn half, in some twisted bow and nod as soon as her eyes brush over me.

She looks almost bleak in dark colors and minimal jewelry. We even share the same knot at the back of our head, even if her hair isn't surely half as hard to rip into a form and much brighter in pallid blonde.

"From face to face, privately, it has been a while."

She sits down deliberately slow, and her hand on the chair flexes like cat claws.

I swallow and grind my teeth together again. Samson looks almost smug now, chin high up. Less disgruntled.

I am so uncomfortable I want to shed my skin.

"I'm very glad you could join," Samson's father answers.

I am wedged in with two mind readers, one brutal and one even more deadly. I am having a strangled conversation with the Queen, after a coup I aided carrying out.

My heart races too fast again, pulse a nervous flutter, and my stomach coils so aggressively. By now, it feels like I am alone in my bedroom again awaiting the nightly attacks.

This evening is a crystalline nightmare.

_Keep yourself together, Daliah Viper,_ a voice of reason tells me. The voice sounds incredibly closely to Larentias, like some backhanded slap of a warning, and I appreciate that.

_Sit straight, breathe in, stop being a scared idiot._

And I do sit up, and I do try to stop looking like a strangled rabbit in the mouth of a wolf.

Their faces blur a second when I blink, and I feel them preying and scratching at my mental frame.

They know I want to believe I was taught well.

It's strange. I can see them talk. But they only exchange pleasantries, short phrases about traveling or the last days. And I can see in their shards of eyes and glass eating smiles that they say something else to one another. Behind it, in their heads, a shadow of a conversation unavailable even for spies with spiders.

The minutes go by like that.

None of us even has touched a piece of silverware on the table. We all occasionally grip a glass with force or nonchalance, but not even that gets into the true depth of alcohol and intoxication.

We all just sip and sneer and smile.

After a while, Samson's father disappears, and I am left with the rotten ones that terrorize and blackmail me for weeks now.

"I think Lady Viper feels left out." Elara turns her attention back to me. The way she holds herself reeks of superiority. Even without a crown on her head. Every inch of her is just like her son for a moment, and I know him very well from all the times he has talked to a spider in the middle of the night now. It's eerie overlapping imagery of long fingers, slender frames, and blue eyes. "Humor us."

And if anyone has ever said that with the least intention to get humored by me, it is Elara Merandus. They stare at me as if I will just take off my shoes and start to dance on the table.

My hands are fists again on the edge of my armrest.

Samson's long fingers clench around my fist and cage me, press me together too tightly. Elara is still waiting. I rip my hand out of the grasp.

"If you want to see a joke, you can walk around in Whitefire and watch the good lords and ladies rip into each other. I don't think that's the reason we are here."

By now, the feeling of something staggering, roaming in accurate movements through my brain is painfully obvious. It doesn't hurt me like my husband. It is more unpleasant.

Elara Merandus huffs.

"You're here because you were invited," she clarifies. "As a guest in your new family's home, you should reciprocate the manners and know your place."

Samson smiles at that, he doesn't move, eyes still trailing over both of us. I don't like the notion of that.

I remember how Larentia told me in prison I would be dead if I didn't get myself together. The memory carries me through the task to form words in my head. I buckled and complied, conformed and bowed to everyone for strategic matters. I still have to bend now, even just a little bit. I am far from a coward. But she is right. I can't barge in this situation. _Careful now._

My mouth seems to be so dry that it takes awfully long and sounds drawn out.

"Your son gave me a position, after...all those incidents."

I mean balls and assassinations.

I mean a coup and a murder.

"You know I was motivated by Ellyn Macanthos dying. You delivered. I kept my tongue," I stick my chin out, even though it probably makes me look like an angry child right now. "Samson over here threatens me. But there is no reason to. And if you think otherwise, tell that to your son."

"Much more daring than I anticipated," she comments. Samson chews on the words waiting for her to snap her fingers. Really just like my dogs. "Not that it helps you. You're not very successful in his employment."

I take a grounding, long breath, fill my lungs with sharp, almost minty air. "No one is. Right now I foremost want the lightning girl's brother and the red named Diana Farley caught and executed, painfully, if possible. A personal matter more than anything else."

They escaped me. Her. Everyone.

Her. She is the patient mastermind. She whispers words to her son.

She has been constantly waiting for the right moment to seize control over the whole system.

This woman is terrifying. But she is smart. Brilliant.

And I am not lying- if I was, she would know. She is inside my head.

For a long breath, she only stares at me. Her eyes dissect me to pieces of flesh and panic rises again in my blood. I can feel her moving through the images of Harbor Bay, the anger in the black plague, the crack of my skull, my cousin carrying me away in fear.

I want to scream. I just stay silent, digging my nails deep into my palms.

When it stops, I have started to draw blood from my own hands.

For another moment she sips at her glass, hands clawed delicately around the glass, somewhere in her own head that no one dares to invade. "Maven and I discussed you and your antics, when you came back, and when you started snooping around. Your acquisition was a tad rushed. But we both agreed if you were amicable to him, you'd be easier to handle. So I leave it to him to handle you and your dogs."

I wouldn't call us amicable, at all, but regarding the fact that I was very thankful and owing after Samson terrorized me, I can see how that was a good idea.

Maven guided me through breathing during a panic attack, waiting patiently for me to recover.

The memory is even more bitter now. Smeared with the clear intention of manipulation more than ever. His insinuations were always and only for him and his mother. I never doubted that.

I take a breath. If Elara sneered, she would at least give me a hint of hostility. Her cold nothingness and the thin wave of amusement don't tell me anything.

She leans back in the chair.

I lower my eyes.

"We still have a deal then," I mutter. I tiptoe on the ledge into a safe death.

"That we do," she notes.

"I'm not the only Viper that has a deal with you."

Something in my words amuses her, to a degree that makes the razor-sharp eyes and the glass splintering smile appear again. "Your father was a dying, desperate man. He wanted to believe he has a legacy, with you, and beyond that. That makes things easier negotiating."

There is that word again. Dying. Sick. Tired and old.

My nostrils soak in air, I can feel the sneer on my face spread again. "What did you do to him?"

"Why would I do anything to him? He has been handy the last few years. A crafty man, and not stupid at all." She leans on her hand, tilting her body slowly forward. The light spills around her, and she looks pale and bright, just like the same blurry vision of my husband, a looming threat ready to break me. "Samson, what did you tell your wife?"

A colorless, narrowed look grazes my throat and face from the other pair of blue eyes. "Nothing she didn't know already. That he killed the brother that would never cooperate. That he made her part of the deal. He sold her."

It would sting, but it is too true, too old of knowledge, and I am distracted. Dying, she says. She doesn't need to lie. It sounds genuine. The spiders scatter over my shoulders and runoff, emerging from buttonholes and sleeves into the dining room. A thick, black snake sits down on the plate before Samson.

Elara watches them with mild disinterest. "Did you tell her that she only got out of the cell because he insisted? He didn't have the authority to clear up your name after you were arrested. So I did that. And you became part of the contract. To ensure he wouldn't step down when he got the seat, but also because it was a shame Macanthos locked you in a house and wasted your talent."

Now it makes even more sense he never said anything about the bruises on my hands. A deal is a deal. We made our beds. Both. A marriage brokered with the insistence of freedom has to be enacted, even if it is the exact opposite of freedom.

I can't flee the house, I can't flee the marriage, I can't flee her.

I sit silently until she leaves. Even if it only means that I feel the layer of sandpaper rub over my mind turning in panicked and confused circles. The scratches in my palms stop bleeding, but I scratch them open again, and with my slow erupting cramps in my lower half, old and new blood in gray and silver bits keep me awake and in my body.

In the end, I am left with nothing but empty glasses and smug Samson. He stands beside the table, returned from the doorway, and stares at me.

By now, I am drunk. I can barely sit upright as the world turns. And I don't even care how dangerous it is with him beside me.

I try to blink the emotions away. I try to compress them into my soul, or whatever I have sitting inside my chest.

Wetness gathers inside my dry eyes. I press my eyelids together harder. Swimming blackness takes my vision away. It works for a moment.

The light feels dim now. It could very well be dark in the room, everything feels foggy and blurry to me.

"You're disgusting," Samson informs me in between a quiet servant taking dishes with him.

Bile and acid rises in my throat when I turn my upper body in the chair to stare at him.

He smiles a little.

For a moment my hand lingers over a leftover knife, and I imagine my bloodstained hand driving it into his throat.

I want to stab him _so_ badly.

Just like the nights together, the Viper Pit incident, the threats made in the night after the attacks on the ruin, I can't stop, I need to poke and try to provoke him. Maybe I should know better by now, but I don't, and I am recklessly drunk and tired.

"Far from subtle, as always," I tell him, gravel in my throat. "You hate my dogs, but you're just the same. You are all like animals, all like my dogs. Maybe even worse. My dogs at least are not only hunters and killers."

For a moment, he almost seems puzzled by my honesty. Then the anger erupts over his eyebrows and flaring nostrils.

"Remember where you are," he notes, voice sharp.

"I've never been more aware of my whereabouts, and you had to be so polite tonight too," I snort. "I see you, whisper. I see you."

I go through the evening, that I don't put it under the lens of hostility for once. But just a mirror. He can feel it rummaging through my dizzy mind. That he makes me laugh now. I don't have to say the words. I still do. Just to taste them.

"All your life, you never were the _best_ for your family. No matter what you did. You want everything so badly. And you want to be seen and rewarded by someone you admire. Someone smarter. Someone more powerful. If only she could see what you can do...and you are trying so hard. You do everything she wants."

Wouldn't I know all about it? The similarities are _disconcerting._

"And there comes family and tells you to hurry up and produce a child for the sake of carrying on the name. Because marrying me and keeping me under your thumb is not enough for them. Nothing is ever enough, isn't it?"

"We are not the same," he presses out between his teeth. When he was angry before, or smug, or even just frustrated, this time, it is the same, sharp sting of hurt pride or a cracked ego that I could witness before. My husband has a few buttons to press, not that many. He is predictable in his patterns. If I wasn't boldly blacked out drunk I would implode with fear.

"No, we're not," I say, swaying upwards."For once, whatever you think about owning me. I have a title and a name. I didn't even get to toast on it. That chair I sat in, that you wont ever sit in again, yes?"

The muscles in his body coil, I can see it in the closeness, and it feels like a snake tightening their muscles, ready to spring into action.

"A short moment, I almost pitied you. Then I remembered what you do to me and the world."

I get one step before his hands clasp around my throat. Clambering backward, I fall against the table, hands grasping at the fabric. The cloth rips off the table and a crystal glass shatters, liquid spilling over the ground.

Even though the drunk haze, now the panic kicks in, a horse leaping upward, jolting in the memory of a place nightmare.

My dried out eyes water again, but I blink inside the light above me directly and wait for it to retreat.

At the same time, the stingers and venom prick my anger awake, and I've already stained in blood anyway, so I kick, fight, and struggle back to not end up on my back or on the ground.

He takes the weak attack with one twitching eye, hair falling into his face now in disheveled strands of ashy blond. His long fingers don't press down. He only holds me.

At the seams of the ceiling, a vapor of black bodies streams over the remaining lights. It flickers and breaks.

"If you were any less useful," he breathes down. "And the day will come. I'll be so happy to end it."

_That is what he is. Not the manners, not the silence. There is the violence. There is the butcher that bruised and tried to break my bones, and he always is awake, not even greatly concealed under his cold surface. _

I breathe heavily, waiting for him to press down and provoke me into action. My eyes water heavy this time. I want to puke, acid bile in my blood and starting up my guts , rising to my throat. The aggression pulses in my blood.

He unfurls above me, hands retreating, brushing off his fingers on his jackets as if I am dirt. I feel the pounding pain of ghostly fingers. But I haven't lost this round. He can't storm off. I poke and bite until the end. I'll never fold together.

The hissing , black cloud filled with manifold legs has half fled, half readied to leap if I make one more decision.

A few already creep over our feet. A shoe flattens them . With a terrifying scrunch their lives are lost.

"You're drunk and miserable," Samson says, because he always wants the last word. "I will escort you home to your dying father, your whoring mother and the rest of your useless family."

"Do what you want," I mutter. "But never forget- I have a house to lead. You don't."


	15. 15: Callous

_callous_

_-being hardened and thickened_

_**-**__ having calluses_

**_-_**_ feeling no emotion_

**_-_**_feeling or showing no sympathy for others _**_:_**_ hard-hearted_

* * *

**_O_**n one side of the Viper halls, animals scream and feet move through the hallways. On the other side, my mother already prepares for the usual nightly activities.

I catch a whiff of white clothes on every floor as I move down.

One is just the usual stilting, gaunt man that always finds his way to my mother's room, and the other is a worrisome procession of Skonos.  
I leave the dogs behind, scattering my upturned collar with bolt leaping spiders. In black and white, hair, equipped with strong pincers, they brandish and protect me, as always.  
And then the time is up, and I have to follow suit after the invitation.  
Like every house in West Archeon, this one is big.

It feels morbidly frigid in itself as if it is shivering.

When I step inside, one of my spiders drops down onto the floor and rushes over the side. It brings hasty distance between me and it.

My eyes burn, but I try to assess the silent room around me.

It reminds me of our house with the steep staircase I left behind in Summerton. The same absence of warmth in any preened pristine decor. Cold and untouched and without a trace of dust.

Whoever took care of this has decided the other one is wrong I came alone.  
The uneasiness rests on my spine like Samson's long fingers. Heron said I was a Merandus. She is wrong, of course. But it would help now.

The spiders shiver and tremble with every breath I take in walking.  
Maven thought he did me a favor telling me his mother would show up. Right now, that feels like a threat more than simple knowledge, even if it helps to avoid surprises. There is literally nothing in my line of power I can do, little I know, and even less I can do to subvert anything when she chooses to talk to me.

If my teeth grind on each other even more, they'll make unpleasant crunching sounds.  
If my spine arches back even more, it will break again. I just try to be taller than I am. Like usual. But even more desperate.

My stomach turns and twists in bizarre knots again, eating itself, as much as I want to hide it, I'm sure it's a rather futile effort in a place filled with mind readers.

If I get any more nervous, I will puke over the carpet. I want to run away. My head can't wrap around the fact that I have returned unharmed only to step inside this nest of frosted death.  
So I just hold it together, for now, rubbing my sweaty palms on the back of my jacket before resting them at my sides. Even now, there are around four to five pairs of visible eyes watching me.

Fingers feeling after my critters, I take a long breath. The smaller spiders have long vanished in the cracks between the floorboards, sitting somewhere on the hinges of doors and in the sharp corners. As well lit as the house is, as light as the colors are, and as sterile and cold as everything feels, I doubt they will survive tonight if I leave them here. At least they are unpleasant to catch, venomous and fast. A few of the remaining crawl over my ear almost in reassurance, brown and black specks of eight-legged friends, settling in the cracks of my clothes and under my collar. They tickle my skin.

The biggest one, a bold jumping spider in black adorned with white dots and stripes along the abdomen and rear, slides over a curtain in the room I am in. The others are like armor on my shoulders and front. They move lazily. As any of the bigger specimens, they can jump and see better than the smaller kinds. The bold jumper on the curtain disappears above the trimmed, wound rod of the curtains.

For a moment, I forget where I am. I am just a spider, and being a spider is, as I have elaborated with multiple people, my preferred state of being.  
A spider has silk to coat a lair and food in. A spider doesn't get self-conscious. A spider hides or eats. A spider has cold blood.

The eyes of the bold jumper focus through the colored void of swirling air and moving forms. It stares down on the unmoving figure of myself, black from heels over pants and the black, upturned collar of my shirt and jacket.

And then the eyes that take in movement see the blurring blue form at the edge of the foyer, at the corner of my own vision, just slowly moving forward. If it wasn't the blond hair smoothed back from a sharp face or the blue ridiculous leather, it would be the stinging of the cologne that always haunts me when I linger in too close proximity to Samson.

My neck cracks when I snap around.

I am reminded of my panic attack in Harbor Bay, and I want to scream and run.  
Instead, I stand very, very still. It doesn't make me invisible, but it helps to ground my vision. He only creeps closer. I can feel him worming inside my brain, it hurts like shivering fins rubbing against my skin. We study each other in the lights raining in white snow down on us.

At least, that's almost funny, he looks horrible for his standards. Lassitude and debility from all the jumping back and forth, maybe, or maybe just because he didn't get enough sleep in the last week in between ruining other people's life.

"Did you lose your voice?" he asks, almost amused.

My body cramps together in the remainder of my bleeding pain and my emotional rawness. I don't feel as bloated, but I still feel the swing of it. It doesn't make me whiny, it is like someone has slapped me, and grey anger blinds me a second.

_I hope you die horribly and rot away on the side of a street like a roadkill, Samson Merandus._

That night in Harbor Bay won't be the status quo- I hate his presence too much to surrender. That is what fuels me. That is the reason I don't run now. My hate fuels me.

"I was already dusting off my veil," I snap at him, unpleasantly surprised to see him. Of course, when one is here, the other would be too. It's in his nature of bootlicking at her feet. What better opportunity than some dinner? "But you're still alive."

"And you're too early. Stop infesting the house with your vermin."

I lift my chin. _"Try_ to stop me."

He lifts his chin as well. "Maybe later when we're alone."

Maybe his family wouldn't appreciate more bruises and mental cuts at their dinner table. Maybe they won't care.

It's the four walls and the time spend alone you need to worry about. My sleepless nights and panicked fever days in the house with the crooked stairs can tell you about it.  
He offers me his right, mouth tugging at the corner into something that isn't a smile. It feels as cool as everything else in this house.

I take two steps and only begrudgingly take the arm. "I was anticipating that something took your head off your shoulders when you didn't greet me in my house."

"I've been more than useful, and that is all I will tell you."

It is like walking in the snow. Like every second in the house we shared, and even with shoes and armor this time, I feel like I freeze from the inside. My heart doesn't stop racing too fast in my body.

I'm stiff and rigid. Hostility seeps out of my pores. One pair of blue eyes watches my every mov. My arm squeezes too tightly as we walk, pressing it to his leather-clad side. I dig my nails into the fabric of his sleeve and hope it at least irritates him.

He's the second son of a cousin removed, and not even his older brother or father have the decency to show up, at least not on time. The house holds its breath. It is hushed and scared.

Once or twice, and very, very quietly, servants rustle over a hallway, and a few times I swear to my disillusioned brain that I hear a child talking, then a quiet sobbing cry, merely down the hallway. It doesn't serve my nervous form. I think about the dead children and their blood on my hand at the sun shooting and flinch involuntarily.

My spiders creep over the wall and catch the sound of the slow shrieking pitch in all abstract horror.

Children live in this mansion. At least one of them is very small, probably on the cusp of becoming a monster with the ability to mind read and terrorize others in their whim.

_Whisper brood._

A stream of hostile air leaves my body.

I dislike children in general. I despise the idea of this one even more. This thing that it represents, and the returning fear that I carry with me since the moment I married him.

Calpurnia told me I would be the mother of a terrifying litter of whispers one day.

Samson doesn't even need to read my thoughts on that one, he makes a sound that could be a laugh if it didn't sound like he was choking. I try to blink it off and sneer at him.

He only leads me through the house, ignoring my nails out for his blood. One more time I feel and hear the child speaking somewhere down the hallway. The voice quakes this time, more defiant, but still not discernable. Maybe a boy, but I don't bet on it. When I let go of his arm, he doesn't even look at me. He only leads the way further into the guts of the house and opens a door. If I was to creep into another room though, I know, he would stop me. He didn't take my arm to be friendly. He seizes me.

"Your parents couldn't be bothered? Your father invited me, after all."

He takes that the same as my previous insults and questions.

"I didn't think you were eager to spend time with my family."

"If I get a formal invitation I expect a certain degree of etiquette," I counter, stepping in beside him.

A dining room, clearly, but not as huge or as official as the one in the summer residence I spent the last months in. And not as small as the dining room that always stayed unused in the house with the steep staircase. The table isn't as old as the one in the Viper mansion, and the wood or the floor do not carry the small hints provided by the four-legged inhabitants about their existence. No scratch marks, no hair, no smell, not even a sound beyond the silent steps running through the house. The only mark is the man that sits right to the end of the table. A bruise as blue and blooming as the ones I hide under my jacket.

Samson's father looks a lot like him. The same skeletal , slim frame in sharp edges, if a little less looming and lean. A little grey on the roots of his blond hair, not as much visible as my father in the black, not as wrinkled around the corner of the eyes. He is smoother skinned, but still less stoic, pragmatic, or elegant than most of the older men in my life.

He looks less pretentious in his choice of clothing though, with less leather and more of a simple but well-fitted suit, and a thin, straight mustache where his son is always clean shaven.

"And you would be right to do so," he stands up very slowly, and I feel like I am the red blooded victim tonight. I get encircled by a dangerous pack. "Which is why I asked your husband to fetch you."

"That makes sense," I acknowledge. "So thoughtful of you."

He doesn't smile. He just inspects my scars. If he would put a hand on my chin and ask me to look at my teeth , he would be as obvious. "You look hardened since the last time I saw you at the wedding."

"I have changed since then. We all have."

Still no smile, only the pathological edge of an unmoved colorless upper lip and a quivering pencil-thin mustache above, almost as pale as the skin it fills. Then he sits down again.

I was sure Samson would keep ignoring me. He hasn't been polite beneath the surface in private moments. He is a man that snaps doors shut and invades spaces I occupy, not to ask or accept. In the presence of his father, he has found his manners again. Maybe it is just to control me. He pulls out the chair on the opposite side of his father. Not the seat at the front, that is reserved for the guest of honor.

"Where is the rest of the dear family?" I don't dare to ask for Elara Merandus, cop out for Samson's mother instead. Maybe she won't show up and Maven has fed me another lie to make me scared. If that is the case, I probably will make the spider bite him the next time he lifts it out of the glass.

Samson sits down next to me after I have reluctantly sunken into the chair.

He answers the question with a small wrinkle of his nose. "My family isn't as lazy as all your Vipers, even if it is only half as big. And at least my mother doesn't have the mental capacity of a jellyfish."

A snort escapes me before I can stop it. "I wouldn't dare to disagree with you, for once in my life."

Not that it answers my question. His father answers me instead.

"She is busy with our grandchildren tonight. There was an accident. Samson is right, it's no secret we aren't as big as a house as the Iral's or Samos'."

The topic is sore, it rustles over the ground like a snake in the brushes.

Just as before, I feel disgusted, but this time it is a thing between Samson and his father. My husband looks like I slapped him again, but less composed.

I stare at the wine glass in front of me intently. Then I just grab it and drink as much as I can without choking. It burns down my throat. I haven't eaten today, and I know I will be drunk in no time if I am not careful.

Right now, wedged between the silent eyes that speak a million words of contempt.

_We're degraded weak branched cousins and second sons. I am a widow, he never married in the first place. Probably because no one wanted to lose a daughter to Merandus and to a man with a bloody streak in an arena._

Maybe Calpurnia wasn't the only one nagging at me for not being yet pregnant. Carrying legacy and populate and infest the world with more of them must be in the interest of every whisper. The fact that Samson is as old as he is without a child must have been the nail in the coffin between them.

My heart shrivels together.

I push my chair a bit further away. It scrapes over the carpet and leaves a dirty dent. I'm glad we have at least a wall of glass and porcelain and alcohol between us.

For a moment I want to take the glasses and throw them at both of them, at the wall, and my hands shake before I curl them into fists.

The spiders in the hallway shuffle below a corner. I tug at them and feel vibrations again, more movement.

I sit with my back to the door, but I don't need to look behind me to realize when it opens and the other -self-invited- dinner guest steps in.

When the dogs see me and my father, their ears tilt forwards and they jump up to wait for some command. The same shift rustles over Samson now. He leans forward the door first when she steps in, and then he even stands up to greet her. His father does the same, but less scrambling.

Samson had some admiration left for her in his mind, I am unsurprised by the courteous greeting. Sometimes he proves he isn't a completely uneducated fool when it comes to manners, he must have had teachers like all of us. He shows it tonight.

I only turn half, in some twisted bow and nod as soon as her eyes brush over me.

She looks almost bleak in dark colors and minimal jewelry. We even share the same knot at the back of our head, even if her hair isn't surely half as hard to rip into a form and much brighter in pallid blonde.

"From face to face, privately, it has been a while."

She sits down deliberately slow, and her hand on the chair flexes like cat claws.

I swallow and grind my teeth together again. Samson looks almost smug now, chin high up. Less disgruntled.

I am so uncomfortable I want to shed my skin.

"I'm very glad you could join," Samson's father answers.

I am wedged in with two mind readers, one brutal and one even more deadly. I am having a strangled conversation with the Queen, after a coup I aided carrying out.

My heart races too fast again, pulse a nervous flutter, and my stomach coils so aggressively. By now, it feels like I am alone in my bedroom again awaiting the nightly attacks.

This evening is a crystalline nightmare.

_Keep yourself together, Daliah Viper,_ a voice of reason tells me. The voice sounds incredibly closely to Larentias, like some backhanded slap of a warning, and I appreciate that.

_Sit straight, breathe in, stop being a scared idiot._

And I do sit up, and I do try to stop looking like a strangled rabbit in the mouth of a wolf.

Their faces blur a second when I blink, and I feel them preying and scratching at my mental frame.

They know I want to believe I was taught well.

It's strange. I can see them talk. But they only exchange pleasantries, short phrases about traveling or the last days. And I can see in their shards of eyes and glass eating smiles that they say something else to one another. Behind it, in their heads, a shadow of a conversation unavailable even for spies with spiders.

The minutes go by like that.

None of us even has touched a piece of silverware on the table. We all occasionally grip a glass with force or nonchalance, but not even that gets into the true depth of alcohol and intoxication.

We all just sip and sneer and smile.

After a while, Samson's father disappears, and I am left with the rotten ones that terrorize and blackmail me for weeks now.

"I think Lady Viper feels left out." Elara turns her attention back to me. The way she holds herself reeks of superiority. Even without a crown on her head. Every inch of her is just like her son for a moment, and I know him very well from all the times he has talked to a spider in the middle of the night now. It's eerie overlapping imagery of long fingers, slender frames, and blue eyes. "Humor us."

And if anyone has ever said that with the least intention to get humored by me, it is Elara Merandus. They stare at me as if I will just take off my shoes and start to dance on the table.

My hands are fists again on the edge of my armrest.

Samson's long fingers clench around my fist and cage me, press me together too tightly. Elara is still waiting. I rip my hand out of the grasp.

"If you want to see a joke, you can walk around in Whitefire and watch the good lords and ladies rip into each other. I don't think that's the reason we are here."

By now, the feeling of something staggering, roaming in accurate movements through my brain is painfully obvious. It doesn't hurt me like my husband. It is more unpleasant.

Elara Merandus huffs.

"You're here because you were invited," she clarifies. "As a guest in your new family's home, you should reciprocate the manners and know your place."

Samson smiles at that, he doesn't move, eyes still trailing over both of us. I don't like the notion of that.

I remember how Larentia told me in prison I would be dead if I didn't get myself together. The memory carries me through the task to form words in my head. I buckled and complied, conformed and bowed to everyone for strategic matters. I still have to bend now, even just a little bit. I am far from a coward. But she is right. I can't barge in this situation. _Careful now._

My mouth seems to be so dry that it takes awfully long and sounds drawn out.

"Your son gave me a position, after...all those incidents."

I mean balls and assassinations.

I mean a coup and a murder.

"You know I was motivated by Ellyn Macanthos dying. You delivered. I kept my tongue," I stick my chin out, even though it probably makes me look like an angry child right now. "Samson over here threatens me. But there is no reason to. And if you think otherwise, tell that to your son."

"Much more daring than I anticipated," she comments. Samson chews on the words waiting for her to snap her fingers. Really just like my dogs. "Not that it helps you. You're not very successful in his employment."

I take a grounding, long breath, fill my lungs with sharp, almost minty air. "No one is. Right now I foremost want the lightning girl's brother and the red named Diana Farley caught and executed, painfully, if possible. A personal matter more than anything else."

They escaped me. Her. Everyone.

Her. She is the patient mastermind. She whispers words to her son.

She has been constantly waiting for the right moment to seize control over the whole system.

This woman is terrifying. But she is smart. Brilliant.

And I am not lying- if I was, she would know. She is inside my head.

For a long breath, she only stares at me. Her eyes dissect me to pieces of flesh and panic rises again in my blood. I can feel her moving through the images of Harbor Bay, the anger in the black plague, the crack of my skull, my cousin carrying me away in fear.

I want to scream. I just stay silent, digging my nails deep into my palms.

When it stops, I have started to draw blood from my own hands.

For another moment she sips at her glass, hands clawed delicately around the glass, somewhere in her own head that no one dares to invade. "Maven and I discussed you and your antics, when you came back, and when you started snooping around. Your acquisition was a tad rushed. But we both agreed if you were amicable to him, you'd be easier to handle. So I leave it to him to handle you and your dogs."

I wouldn't call us amicable, at all, but regarding the fact that I was very thankful and owing after Samson terrorized me, I can see how that was a good idea.

Maven guided me through breathing during a panic attack, waiting patiently for me to recover.

The memory is even more bitter now. Smeared with the clear intention of manipulation more than ever. His insinuations were always and only for him and his mother. I never doubted that.

I take a breath. If Elara sneered, she would at least give me a hint of hostility. Her cold nothingness and the thin wave of amusement don't tell me anything.

She leans back in the chair.

I lower my eyes.

"We still have a deal then," I mutter. I tiptoe on the ledge into a safe death.

"That we do," she notes.

"I'm not the only Viper that has a deal with you."

Something in my words amuses her, to a degree that makes the razor-sharp eyes and the glass splintering smile appear again. "Your father was a dying, desperate man. He wanted to believe he has a legacy, with you, and beyond that. That makes things easier negotiating."

There is that word again. Dying. Sick. Tired and old.

My nostrils soak in air, I can feel the sneer on my face spread again. "What did you do to him?"

"Why would I do anything to him? He has been handy the last few years. A crafty man, and not stupid at all." She leans on her hand, tilting her body slowly forward. The light spills around her, and she looks pale and bright, just like the same blurry vision of my husband, a looming threat ready to break me. "Samson, what did you tell your wife?"

A colorless, narrowed look grazes my throat and face from the other pair of blue eyes. "Nothing she didn't know already. That he killed the brother that would never cooperate. That he made her part of the deal. He sold her."

It would sting, but it is too true, too old of knowledge, and I am distracted. Dying, she says. She doesn't need to lie. It sounds genuine. The spiders scatter over my shoulders and runoff, emerging from buttonholes and sleeves into the dining room. A thick, black snake sits down on the plate before Samson.

Elara watches them with mild disinterest. "Did you tell her that she only got out of the cell because he insisted? He didn't have the authority to clear up your name after you were arrested. So I did that. And you became part of the contract. To ensure he wouldn't step down when he got the seat, but also because it was a shame Macanthos locked you in a house and wasted your talent."

Now it makes even more sense he never said anything about the bruises on my hands. A deal is a deal. We made our beds. Both. A marriage brokered with the insistence of freedom has to be enacted, even if it is the exact opposite of freedom.

I can't flee the house, I can't flee the marriage, I can't flee her.

I sit silently until she leaves. Even if it only means that I feel the layer of sandpaper rub over my mind turning in panicked and confused circles. The scratches in my palms stop bleeding, but I scratch them open again, and with my slow erupting cramps in my lower half, old and new blood in gray and silver bits keep me awake and in my body.

In the end, I am left with nothing but empty glasses and smug Samson. He stands beside the table, returned from the doorway, and stares at me.

By now, I am drunk. I can barely sit upright as the world turns. And I don't even care how dangerous it is with him beside me.

I try to blink the emotions away. I try to compress them into my soul, or whatever I have sitting inside my chest.

Wetness gathers inside my dry eyes. I press my eyelids together harder. Swimming blackness takes my vision away. It works for a moment.

The light feels dim now. It could very well be dark in the room, everything feels foggy and blurry to me.

"You're disgusting," Samson informs me in between a quiet servant taking dishes with him.

Bile and acid rises in my throat when I turn my upper body in the chair to stare at him.

He smiles a little.

For a moment my hand lingers over a leftover knife, and I imagine my bloodstained hand driving it into his throat.

I want to stab him _so_ badly.

Just like the nights together, the Viper Pit incident, the threats made in the night after the attacks on the ruin, I can't stop, I need to poke and try to provoke him. Maybe I should know better by now, but I don't, and I am recklessly drunk and tired.

"Far from subtle, as always," I tell him, gravel in my throat. "You hate my dogs, but you're just the same. You are all like animals, all like my dogs. Maybe even worse. My dogs at least are not only hunters and killers."

For a moment, he almost seems puzzled by my honesty. Then the anger erupts over his eyebrows and flaring nostrils.

"Remember where you are," he notes, voice sharp.

"I've never been more aware of my whereabouts, and you had to be so polite tonight too," I snort. "I see you, whisper. I see you."

I go through the evening, that I don't put it under the lens of hostility for once. But just a mirror. He can feel it rummaging through my dizzy mind. That he makes me laugh now. I don't have to say the words. I still do. Just to taste them.

"All your life, you never were the _best_ for your family. No matter what you did. You want everything so badly. And you want to be seen and rewarded by someone you admire. Someone smarter. Someone more powerful. If only she could see what you can do...and you are trying so hard. You do everything she wants."

Wouldn't I know all about it? The similarities are _disconcerting._

"And there comes family and tells you to hurry up and produce a child for the sake of carrying on the name. Because marrying me and keeping me under your thumb is not enough for them. Nothing is ever enough, isn't it?"

"We are not the same," he presses out between his teeth. When he was angry before, or smug, or even just frustrated, this time, it is the same, sharp sting of hurt pride or a cracked ego that I could witness before. My husband has a few buttons to press, not that many. He is predictable in his patterns. If I wasn't boldly blacked out drunk I would implode with fear.

"No, we're not," I say, swaying upwards."For once, whatever you think about owning me. I have a title and a name. I didn't even get to toast on it. That chair I sat in, that you wont ever sit in again, yes?"

The muscles in his body coil, I can see it in the closeness, and it feels like a snake tightening their muscles, ready to spring into action.

"A short moment, I almost pitied you. Then I remembered what you do to me and the world."

I get one step before his hands clasp around my throat. Clambering backward, I fall against the table, hands grasping at the fabric. The cloth rips off the table and a crystal glass shatters, liquid spilling over the ground.

Even though the drunk haze, now the panic kicks in, a horse leaping upward, jolting in the memory of a place nightmare.

My dried out eyes water again, but I blink inside the light above me directly and wait for it to retreat.

At the same time, the stingers and venom prick my anger awake, and I've already stained in blood anyway, so I kick, fight, and struggle back to not end up on my back or on the ground.

He takes the weak attack with one twitching eye, hair falling into his face now in disheveled strands of ashy blond. His long fingers don't press down. He only holds me.

At the seams of the ceiling, a vapor of black bodies streams over the remaining lights. It flickers and breaks.

"If you were any less useful," he breathes down. "And the day will come. I'll be so happy to end it."

_That is what he is. Not the manners, not the silence. There is the violence. There is the butcher that bruised and tried to break my bones, and he always is awake, not even greatly concealed under his cold surface. _

I breathe heavily, waiting for him to press down and provoke me into action. My eyes water heavy this time. I want to puke, acid bile in my blood and starting up my guts , rising to my throat. The aggression pulses in my blood.

He unfurls above me, hands retreating, brushing off his fingers on his jackets as if I am dirt. I feel the pounding pain of ghostly fingers. But I haven't lost this round. He can't storm off. I poke and bite until the end. I'll never fold together.

The hissing , black cloud filled with manifold legs has half fled, half readied to leap if I make one more decision.

A few already creep over our feet. A shoe flattens them . With a terrifying scrunch their lives are lost.

"You're drunk and miserable," Samson says, because he always wants the last word. "I will escort you home to your dying father, your whoring mother and the rest of your useless family."

"Do what you want," I mutter. "But never forget- I have a house to lead. You don't."


	16. 16: Assessment

_assessment_

_-an opinion on the nature, character, or quality of something _

_-the act of placing a value on the nature, character, or quality of something _

* * *

**_B_**reathing next to Samson is like breathing in powdered lead. It poisons my drunken brain. I am dizzy and as brittle as my heat strained hair. The memory of his fingers on my throat makes me want to vomit. I feel him, beside me, inside me, it makes no difference, the contamination always spreads, and he wasn't even the only person in mind tonight. My bloody palms can speak about it. The silvery grey blood is dried over the marks in my skin.

None of us speaks on the way to the mansion, and none of us attempts to look at the other if we don't have to.

Instead, I stare at the blinking light of Archeon and wonder how many minds are asleep out there, red bodies in uneasy rest between labor. I wonder how many of us are out there patrolling the remaining bridges. I wonder how much of the city that doesn't really fall asleep from the sweeping headlights, the neverending noises, how much of it is in reach for a whisper to see. I recall flying over the rooftops, savory wings in smoke and the hidden parapets of the high walls and houses hemming the streets. I felt like a queen. Not that my husband has the capacity to feel anything but above all else.

When I reach the foyer, I am ready to puke over the carpet, head spinning, eyes still dried out.

It's too silent on our side, with the eventual breaking of music and still too loud noises the side of my mother produces.

I am too tired to be angered or even annoyed by her. I reiterate the idea of sending Hadrien or Hector to throw her out. I should do that as fast as I can. Right now, I can't see a straight line, and that is dangerous on its own, especially with Samson still around.

So I just stumble up the stairs. My feet are loud on the floor, followed by a slighter, less heavy footfall. Our shadows flicker over the wall for a moment when a headlight or lantern passes in the distance below the windows, then I can feel my safety line of shielding fangs and fur.

Runt always snaps at people and dogs if she can, and they never liked him. Now, I can hear her snarl, a silvery shadow pressing beside me, stiff and rigid. One Ear follows up. They half perch, ready to jump him. Runt gives one bark when he moves, a warning, and snaps again.

In the half-light, they are deadly, gleaming white teeth and low, rumbling growls. They are so big they seem to reach over my childishly small form, heads high, pressing their ears to their heads.

"You have escorted me," I conclude. "Feel free to leave."

"I'm still staying in the house," he says. "As long as I am here again. Your mutts can't change that."

He makes another step in the circle of our bodies, and Runt leaps a little forward. She is still the fastest, and she could bite his fingers off. Her teeth don't even nip, but the close call is enough to make his form retract.

"I don't think they appreciate being called names in their home, Samson. Did you leave your manners at the dinner table?"

As if to help my point, One Ear draws his chaps back, tongue sticking out between a warning growl.

"The guest rooms are that way." I point down the hallway, as far away from me as I can.

To my surprise, or maybe because the dogs snarl and stay at my side, he doesn't come inside my room. I roll up between the covers beside the two dogs and hug them tightly, cuddling into the warmth and comfort of something that is both alive and revering me as their leader.

I still have nightmares, harsh landscapes of memories that break on my skin until I shake awake. My broken fingers grab the dogs so tight they wince and lick my face again.

* * *

No news from Loren, but I didn't expect that so fast. I rather have him approach the situation commendable. If he deserts me, I will do worse than break his nose and punch Calpurnia in the throat.

No news from Atara either. But I also don't expect anything else. Last time I saw her she said she never wanted to be like me. Now, look where we both are.

No news from my father. He is fast asleep with Battlescar guarding the doorway when I walk by. I let him sleep. I don't appreciate the waiting. But my head almost feels like it explodes this morning, even after a shower and a meager breakfast.

Even the loose braid pulls at my scalp too tight, it hurts to blink. My whole body is a ruin of stiff muscles. The black scorpion that Larentia send me sits on my shoulder.

I find Hector and my guards circling around the lower story. The smaller one sways over a few crinkles on his patches of his uniform, as if to prevent something sticking to it that was just said. My stoneskin guard is much bulkier, but Hector stands so straight and sharp he could probably cut through his hardened skin with just his eyes or the displeased line of his mouth. He isn't only just displeased by whatever discussion they just had.

"We have Arven's staying in the guest rooms and your mother's, as well as the whisper."

No surprise about Samson. Not even much surprise about white clad figures from the house of silence. One of them rivals my own husband in his way of acting like he owns the Viper mansion. Another one, though. I wonder which one. I have a strange feeling I know about it. About a girl with green eyes and a defiant stance.

"A lot of people," I just say, crossing my arms.

He looks back at the uniformed guard. A foreign body for a man that told me he cares about family now that we are together. "I was just making sure your newest security personal is on the same page as me."

My background check for them is still pending, so he might as well share a bit of the information with me. I cock my head to the side. "And are they?"

Hector shrugs. "This one here has a clean record, and he's a big fighter, I say you will make good use of that, the banshee behaves like a moody little girl, but knows boundaries beyond a snarky face. They're better than some others."

"We'll see."

The morning is filled with tedious meetings. First, Sonya hangs on my heels again. But she drifts away as soon as I notice her.

The next one to shake off are some obsolete henchmen send to make my life miserable. They somehow manage to not only make me laughable by refusing to sit down and simply brushing up on me in the hallway. As well as making themselves look laughable thinking they can bring me anything to negotiate over. I've been sitting in the meetings and have the papers, and I don't slow down as they gang up on me.

They argue with me all the stride along the hallway. My voice is answering in a growling, hissing, and trying to not sound as miserable as I feel.

Last time I ran into her in this palace, Evangeline was half-awake because the explosion and commotion rumbled through the foundation of the city and our lives.

She's fully awake this time, with interchanging spikes slung around her wrists, and her long hair in a low braid made of the same metal tint.

Again, we have a moment of mimicry, taking stance, eyes and faces as little asleep or tired, and as always, she wins. One long strand of grey hair wisps along her cheek and her well-shaped eyebrows draw together before she tells the guards off in her usual way of brusque commands.

I take a moment, just a moment, even if I don't appreciate the waiting. Something inside her face tells me she knows about my mental state. Her eyes have easily found the scraping marks in my hands. That must be it. If her brother has spilled the truth about my breakdown in Harbor Bay, I'm in deep trouble.

* * *

I don't appreciate cooling my heels at all. And so while I wait, left hanging, I feel tempted to find my spider legs in Maven Calore's posession again. At this time of the day, though, he wouldn't be in his bedroom. It is barely afternoon. I am fairly sure that he's around. Maybe his mother is too. Even though I haven't seen her. Samson must be somewhere around too.

But a spider won't do right now. A spider would only be able to listen, and I don't want to listen. I want to end this day of waiting. Now that the formal dinner in the cold frozen nest of the whispers has passed, I want to hunt again. And I have questions no one has answered yet.

His study is almost as boringly empty as his bedroom. It is telling the story of nothing. It's a show of some colors and a few decorations that are leftovers from richer days, days of an older man, but nothing else catches my immediate attention now that I entered.

There are no offerings and gifts from Maven Calore anymore. He doesn't have tousled hair and frantic movements, like a sleepless child in a bed. He doesn't have the same silent authority over me as in Harbor Bay. At least the crown sits straight on his head, even though the crimson cape that bashed me in a face is burned, something alike it hangs over the armrest next to him.

After the appropriate second of etiquette, I sit down on the chair in front of him and cross my legs. The black bodies all around us swarm together and soak the wall in a small , black mass. Then they crawl towards me.

"We're quite alone today," I answer, blinking.

As alone as you can be in a place like this.

"There were names and details given to you, and intel, about this...about the New Bloods,"I try to get to the point.

His eyes are still not as predictable moving as the other blue pairs that stalk me. But I learn more about him every day. "I'm not sharing everything with you. You'll have to wait until you get the next name."

"Do you have a list?" The question slips through before I can stop my curiosity.

He questions me back at the same rapid pace. "What if I do?"

"Where would such a list come from? Who made it?"

I don't get an answer.

"Efficiently speaking," I restart the topic, spiders raking over my boot to crawl back to me. "If you want the red-blooded anomalies under lock and key or dead such as that boy in Harbor Bay, you should find personnel to arrest them."

"As in a secret unit to dispatch and hunt them?" Maven asks, a rhetoric suggestion more than anything, given how shrewd and unmoved he follows our discussion, still sitting on his chair. The light draws his form in umbra and coal over the flat surface of the table. No edged in borders of Norta like in the council room. Just a smooth table.

I remember my father told me to be patient. I retorted that Iw as nothing but. I take a deep breath to elaborate on this negotiation. If I can survive his mother, I can survive him. And that makes me almost too safe. I take this conversation a step further.

"That girl from the residence and the one you send me to dispatch from the village both escaped. They probably joined the rebellion. Because we were too late. And you didn't get anything out of murdering the boy and shocking the girl. Your forces failed to arrest your brother."

"You mean you failed," he scoots back a bit in his seat, distancing himself from me. It isn't about me attacking him. We know I could maul him before I would get arrested and chopped on the block, or shot in the head. He distances himself because he thinks about something, it is turning in his head. All the while he doesn't want me in his space. As if I care.

"Your forces failed," I repeat. " Your hand held the interceptor device, and you gave orders to let them slip through. The rebels blew up the center on top of Ocean Hill. You were there, even if few people know it. We both do. You can blame me or Ptolemus, but you can't get rid of him, and you're missing a shot if you dispose of me now. The Queen assured me you and I were _amicable_." It burns in my throat to repeat her words.

He looses some of the distance in his face. Maybe because I strain whatever patience he has.

"I won't give you that list, no matter how amicable we are. I'll never trust your intentions, and you know it."

I shrug. "If you don't feed me a whole meal, give me a treat at least."

"Everyone wants a treat, if you haven't noticed," his fingers clack over the flat table between us. Not impatient, almost pondering. They drum a beat of calculation. The silver bracelets on his wrists click together, and I almost expect a spark of flames. But unlike his brother, he doesn't blaze me with fire, he catches me cold with a proposition. "If I give you a title of vanity and make you head of a secret unit, is that enough to keep you part of the machinery? To keep you silent and satisfied?"

A title of vanity. One more. And do I love titles that don't discriminate me. Being a Lady is good. Being an heir is a position, but not a military used title. Ptolemus has rows of achievements, the stoneskins loved their titles. Secretaries, colonels, officers.

I deserve all of what they offer me. I am not Samson, I know this is a bait and switch game we play. I know it is dangerous, and I don't want to be too greedy. But sweetening the deal for me?

I want to take that, as long as it is worth something.

"Do I get any resources?"

He doesn't think about that too long. "You can keep the two from Habor Bay. That's all. Use your own resources. You are the head of a noble house."

"Where do these-" What is the right word? Things? Anomalies? People? Reds? Traitors? "Where do you store them? Will you lock them away? Dispose of them? You can't murder them all and hang them from a statue. I have kennels and cages filled with animals to feed and I know it can be time consuming and money consuming to do so. Will you just sit them straight into one of the smaller prisons? Is there one with enough cells if the red-blooded ones fill as many lists as the silver courtiers you want to get rid of?"

"Keep hunting them, and keep to your Samos cousins, and I'm sure that question will be answered soon enough. Let's just say," He doesn't smile in triumph, but he doesn't look uncomfortable either. It looks more like his face relaxes and cramps together, an unpleasantry or inconvenience that I ask him that. "You are far from the first person asking these questions, any of them. Everything has been set in motion long before I bribed you. And it'll stay that way."


	17. 17: Suppress

_suppress_

_-to put down by authority or force: subdue_

_-to keep from public knowledge: such as to keep secret_

_-to stop or prohibit the publication or revelation of_

_-to exclude from consciousness** : **to keep from giving vent to_

_-to restrain from a usual course or action  
_

_-to inhibit the growth or development of_

_obsolete **: **to press down_

* * *

**_T_**he first five names are given to me in the next days, after a long session of more discussions in Whitefire. I prepare fast, I have waited in the wings already. Samson is still rummaging through the house, my mother is still throwing her luscious little evening parties, my father is still tired and looks the part. I can't wait to leave.

Since no one can snuff out the rebels, at least not yet, we don't make a plan based on that. We don't know where they will appear. Instead, we route and rewire our location and plans to necessity and structural ease.

I was the one preaching about efficiency. And so the plan is as followed: Retrieve the first two targets, ready them for transport, move on, and then escort the last one back to wherever. It will take me about a week with all the back and forth, and all the wiring up contacts in between.  
If you could draw a route in a thick black pen over a map, it would root in Archeon and move away, slowly crawling further. If the trend continues, I may just reach the outskirts of Delphie, or the air base Atara is stationed in. Wouldn't that be something, visiting my dear bird girl. All the while her brother is trying to catch and strangle her friend Heron and her family.

The nearest targets are siblings. They live in the outskirts of red villages just a few hours away from Archeon. The measures have thinned out the villages here too. Close to the remaining sources of power, closer to a big city, the silver mansions upstream, or the technological facility keeping reds in their proximity building our instruments, they have nowhere to go.

They don't have much cover to flee to. Even if my contact assures me that many have either tried to. Some starve away in their attempts to escape misery. Because no red, glorious rebellion has come to save them. The Scarlet Guard bombed, murdered and now they have vanished.  
I don't expect any of the rebels to come close to the center of their future demise. They can't pull bombs and fuses anymore in secret. The tunnels have been taken care of, and now faces are made known.

No. This is a test run. It's easy. Just as the vanity title, this is testing my loyalty. My endurance. They don't give me anything without being sure I am made of diamond glass. I made a proposal, now I need to prove myself.

I brought Runt and One Ear with me this time, as well as my guards and Hadrien. I could have come alone without a gun and no one would have hurt me. It isn't even a hunt. It's a hut, not like the one standing on Stilts in that village during the hunt with my cousins, but as miserable all the same.

We don't even kick down any doors today. The whole family stands lined up in their home.

Gun dangling at one side, metal cuffs on the other, I take a step inside the small space.

The red family is surrounded by us and the dogs, as well as my contact in the officer guiding us here. The officer is my age, a little bit older, and he watches us with pale submission and not much joy.

I look at the names on the crude paper, back at them. Their names and the birthdate and blood group are lined up in mechanical letters.

I came for new blood, for anomalies. For dangerous creatures that can shoot lightning and join rebellions. I came for people that share the ability to inflict pain. Just as the Barrows, throwing me over banisters and raining down sparks over the army.

The one named Wolliver in Harbor Bay was a teenage boy, hanging from a noose. The others that escaped were more dangerous.

These ones here, they are children.

The younger one is not even four. He has thin, dark hair, clogged together by sweat and dirt. When he sees my dogs, his hands cling to the ragged pant leg of his mother. Runt stands alert, ears up, panting. One Ear sits beside my leg, pressing his big paws and body against my boot. It looks too clean and gleaming polished surrounded by the dirt.

The older one is a girl with the delicate bones of someone underfed their whole life, pale and scared. Their freckled faces and colorless, grey eyes swimming in their faces stare at me.  
The longer the silence in the dirty, small house stretches, the more pressing it gets.

"Take the children to the transport," I tell my animosi cousin, Asher and the banshee, called Bryce. The officer to my right moves a step back.

Their mother stood very silent until now. When my guards move to grab her children, she shrieks forward. The toddler behind her legs pulls forward along.

Asher holds her tightly, twisting her arms. Her words are barely audible in a sobbing, high pitched scream, but they are pleading.

The toddler still stares at the dogs, then up to his mother. He barely starts crying when gloved Hadrien collects him. The air around him cracks a second. My dogs put their ears flat to their heads in the sudden stroke of heat. Hadrien swoops away from the crying mother, muttering something. The child looks at him with big eyes. Hadrien doesn't look back. He rarely meets eyes or shows emotions. Now, his dark leather gloved hands just cradle the dirty toddler in his arms and carry the kid away.

The dogs relax a little again.

Since my guards are both busy with the mother, I take on the girl myself. Just as her baby brother, she doesn't struggle at all.

Red children are bruised to stand still and avert their gaze. This small girl lets me wrap my hands around her wrists to bind her.

Skin on skin, I feel her beating heart, the pulse that rushes under the salt-crusted, wet skin. But it is not her plain fear or her being so alive. As soon as she touches me, something flashes between us. I know the connection of a whisper breaking into my brain. It isn't exactly the same, but similar enough for me to breathe in strangled, with blurred fear infecting my system.

The next moment she looks at me, I see her eyes. And they look right into my soul, into whatever I have done. They see every corpse, and they see every pain I ever inflicted and had to endure.

To me, she is a freakish genetic anomaly. But I can see in her face. She sees my scarred face and hard eyes.

_To her, I am a monster. Inside and outside._

As fast as I can, I swish the cuffs around from my belt and snap them in place. Her wrists are so thin I need to tighten them.

Asher is done dealing with the red woman, and she is slumped over on the ground by now.

They get put in the back of a vehicle, up to be transported away to the place Maven has hinted me at, and we move on.

Up at the gravels and loose stones on the road, into the dust of a faded summer and swirling autumn. I rake my fingers over the back of my dog's heads, petting them, staring at the dust clouds.

"That went rather fast," Hadrien tells me. His eyes more distant than mine, especially without his glasses. He doesn't look at my face. "We will be able to take a pitstop at the outer residence of the Vipers as planned."

"You are always rotating in plans, are you?" I ask him, crossing my arms.

He flails his hands a moment, obviously trying to match my body language but failing. "I like being on time. I like having schedules."

"Right, then you will like that we are on time," I confirm. "We take a night's rest, then move on by air."

He only nods.

"What did you tell the kid?" I ask, voice low. "That child could have unleashed something deadly."

"Usually," my animosi cousin answers, detached. "I would have said it could be much worse. But my parents told me to understand what other people are worried about. And this child asked for his mother. So I told him that he'll be with his mother again soon. I hope that was not too cruel? It seemed to calm him down."

I blink against the unwelcome feeling in my stomach and my dry eyes welling up in something I can't explain.

_The mother will be executed, probably. And a toddler can't survive in prison on his own very long. _

Taking a breath, I remind myself that I am indomitable. There is nothing to change it. This is my diamond heart test. I wanted this. At least I didn't hurt them at their arrest. Whatever the rest of the officers do is not my business anymore.

I stare at the river while we travel on, looking into both directions. Where we came from, where we passed.

If you have the vision of a bird or know that they are there, you can see the smoke plumes from the factories, miles, and miles away, hours and hours, as we passed it traveling by ship back to Archeon from the summer residence. They are only guarded by fences, commandos, and the trees in the water that filter the pollution. If you guess the other way, you can almost sense Archeon tensing, clenching in lights.

We move away from both.

The house stands build seclusive, even more so than the houses in West Archeon. It has a wider berth, more space for animals, not just a small backyard, but it shares the same metal fences surrounding the grass. And it is smaller than the mansion. One nervous red servants rustles on the outskirts of the gates, and a our vehicle is not the only one that has left rims and traces on the roads.

I thought we would be alone here. But we are not. I'm greeted with a bustling of animals. Then, a moth flutters over my face, cotton soft antennae tickling my ear. The dogs pant at my legs again.

A few guards patrol in the distance. But besides black, I only make out one silver-haired head from a magnetron guard, and my heart stops. My palms start to sweat. One Ear beside me whines low in confusion. Runt tilts her head.

"Who's here?" Hadrien asks. Asher and Bryce both have their hands on their guns. I leave mine strapped. "Who did you tell you would pause here?"

"Only Hector," I whistle low. "But I have a suspicion your loyalist father shared the information with someone else."

The rapid noses move on the ground. My dogs shift past the nervous servant. The dogs catch the whiff of something soft, a perfume. It tickles my nose just like the moth did my ear.

I hurry through bare bone walls, only decorated with a few meager images of animals and one small green stroke for our family.

Like a Queen in her own kingdom, Larentia has made herself some space in the living room of the house. She sits poised, clearly waiting. I look shabby against her dark dress and her firm fitted, cast on dress billowing slowly down her waist.

Hadrien stops behind me, right next to one of my dogs.

"Leave us alone," she demands, chin up. Her face turns to the group behind me. Beside me, Runt stops in her agitated tracks, pushing her tail between her legs before snarling low.

I stare at my mother, sister, idol.

And even if a part of me is starstruck, delighted, another part of me is tired and still frightful. Still burning with apathetic shame I can't push away.

Her green eyes soak through my facade.

"You could at least greet me," she says, standing up. And even though we are the same height, she is bigger than me in every regard.

"I apologize, Larentia, always a pleasure to see you," I finally find my form and look back at Hadrien. "Take the dogs and wait upstairs, or outside."

They close the door behind me, and it falls heavy.

"What are you doing here?" I ask. I realize now that her eyes don't leave my face alone that it is the first time she sees the scars on my jaw and cheek.

"Don't be surprised, it's a small window to discuss things."

After the whispers and Samson have been left behind in Archeon, I really shouldn't be surprised. It is indeed a very small window, but smart, she always keeps her distance to the fires she can't control.

"What can I do for you?" I ask. In truth, I want to ask something else, something much more childish.

_Did I do something wrong?_

To which the answer would be a disturbed yes, because I am walking on the edge of everything.

I shake that thought off.

She walks two steps towards me, straight and without losing eye contact.

"Letters are good enough in the long run, but encrypting your animal analogies gets cumbersome, and it doesn't leave room for details," she explains. "How about you tell me the truth about the last weeks?"


	18. 18: Deify

_deify_

_-to love or admire too much _

_-to glorify as of supreme worth_

* * *

_**L**_ying to Larentia feels like I cut off the tail of a lizard. It wiggles and moves helpless, devoid of any function until it dies off and lies too still.

I cannot tell her about my deal with Maven. I cannot tell her I knew about the rebels at the sun shooting. I cannot tell her I knew about the lightning girl. I cannot tell her what the whispers want or do. I cannot speak about the death of my uncle or that my father waited so patiently to do it.

Too many words left to be unspoken.

Instead I tell her a pitiful truth first.

"I tried to gain some insight in my marriage, but I can only tell you what everyone knows about Samson. He is a cruel brute that tried to break me a few times. And now he uses my incompetent mother to gain access to every room in the house and wants to know every secret. She keeps distasteful parties and company too."

Larentia makes a displeased sound. Showing fangs, her white teeth blink through her lips a second. She looks back out. I follow her eyes into the grass littered with red flowers behind the house. The cups are delicate, more like weeds than actual petals, and their intense, spindling bodies reflect the light in hypnotic patterns. They remind me of spider legs, growing in colonies and running wild over cobwebs.

"Your mother never knew when to keep her legs or her mouth shut. I will take care of her. It is about time someone does."

"I'd be eternally grateful," I state and bow. I don't dare to pull a chair over. I can't turn my back. I am almost paralyzed. "You know my father is unwell. It keeps getting worse."

A nod. I feel how we draw everything that flutters and crawls into the room. The spiders, ants, moths. Everything gravitates towards me and her.

"I had a bad run-in with Queen Elara at dinner with my in-laws but I could convince her that I am utmostly interested in turning the rebels in. I mostly negotiate with her son. I wouldn't say Maven Calore likes me. But he likes to use me." He surely likes to unload on my poor spider whatever he feels like revealing.

"I offered myself up for arrests and special tasks regarding rebels and...and-" I flinch away from stating it. "Anomalies."

"New Bloods," Larentia corrects me. "Red rats." And of course, she knows that. She knows what they are.

Unfazed, she turns from the flowers in a cutting, but graceful motion. You can see where Evangeline has inherited it from. She sits down again. "And now?"

I draw my shoulders back. "The first arrests by myself were made today. I will reroute through Norta for a few more stops."

I cannot tell her that the children all weigh heavy on my consciousness, more so than the guards I killed, or even Ellyn and defusing Ara from her position, everyone I condemned. I remember myself slipping on silver blood of four-year-old twins and how I blamed Barrow for murdering our children. And then the muddy eyes of my red boy mix in.

I was taught indifference. Why do I feel so bad? This is not optimal. This is not how it should be. I am doing my job. I do what I have to. She can't save me. I am on my side and my side alone.

"They were children," I still tell her.

For a second, I am a _stupid,_ lonely child myself again. I shrink under Larentia's eyes, wither away and try to reform. Her mouth coils a little, her neck stretches. She looks down on me, even if we are on the same level. She wagers about the thoughts in my brain.

The swirl of insects is so tight now it could be a maelstrom of my silent panic. It twitches and runs around us up the ceiling, just like it did in the Merandus' mansion. The moths flutter around and sink around her chair. My legs are still shaking. I pretend to lean down. In truth I don't squat in balance. I fall and kneel. My hands try to look inconspicuous picking one of the bigger ones up. I hold the black butterfly of the night softly. I cup it gently and try not to look at her.

"They were children," I repeat. "The first arrests. There is another family on the list. I am still uncertain where they bring them. No one yet has told me the location of the prison."

"A secret facility is called that because it is secret. Use your head."

"You know about it?" I perk my head, still cupping a moth. Do you know their location?"

"Who do you think helped to build a prison that's well hidden and extensively equipped? Where does the money come from? The guards?"

There are probably few things that ever go below Volo or any of the people licking at his boot, especially when it comes to money, and I should have known that my extended family was involved. There are few things that go above Larentia.

I swallow. "So Ptolemus and Evangeline..."

"Ptolemus will be there by the end of the week with you. Stand up." I expect her foot to kick me for a moment. She only shifts, one foot in a sharp heel cutting the air, drawing a circle. It makes her skirt rustle a little bit. "Stop being pathetic. What did I teach you?"

My tongue talks with mechanical memory. I look up. "Everything is expendable except family."

She nods once. "And this summer, what did I tell you to be?"

I stare at her foot when I answer. "A scorpion, Larentia."

"A scorpion doesn't winge for something below its status."

I choke on a breath. Larentia shifts again. Her heels hammer on the ground like nails in a coffin.

"Get up," she repeats, sharp this time. "And live with the decision you have made. You always wanted to lead, now you do, and you will not get soft. I need you to retain your status."

I stand up and smooth over my jacket, then move closer to her chair.

She is right. I made the decision to lead. I proposed the offer. I gave them away in order. And not every New Blood will be a child. Some of them are hazards. And some could be deadly weapons. Just the same as the lightning girl. And her jumping brother. Either way, giving them resources would be impossible. What is the alternative? There is none anyway. I rather want to know about the secretive circulations about the anomalies and whatever is happening to this sneaky little red-blooded pack of rats.

When I hunted a red rebel in tunnels below the fundaments of Archeon, I had it right.

_Age doesn't matter. Not in this. Not in violence and wrath. Even our children get murdered, their children get murdered, and we all have grown up as soon as we emerged and got thrown into the wild world with all the rules. Innocence is lost and should be purged._

I catch my sister, mother, cousin studying my scars again.

"Do you like them?" I ask her. I didn't foresee that her fingers coil forward like the diamond-shaped head of our namesake, the backside of a ring presses cooly in my skin as she grabs upward to hold my face. She inspects the scattered jawline of scars and littered cheek, up to my lip that is split.

"Beauty was never a defining feature of you. You never cared for it." It doesn't even sound brutal. Her hand is almost soft. Her eyes are still burning. "Is it an insult to your husband or a reminder not to fall like your former family in law?"

I cringe under her touch. The sheer mention of Ellyn in my reflection makes me startled. How does she know?

"I thought it would make me more intimidating," I mutter. "Fierce, maybe? And I kept it to not forget that they almost killed me."

"Scars won't get you the respect you want. Not if you earn them by defeat." Her fingers let go of my chin. I snap back into position and straighten even more with her next words. "Stop slouching. Stand proud."

"Are you-" My voice shakes a little uncertain. I clear my throat, heavily. "Are _you_ proud of _me_?"

"You've come very far from a widow to an heir in one month." She chooses the words with the same delicacy as a hand picks up a crystal glass. They are underlined with something careful. But to me, they are precious. "Don't fail your intended purpose and stay loyal, little bug. "

* * *

The last one is only one name to take into arrest. I have almost finished the task. I haven't faltered, I don't winge. This is the last one on my small errand list. The first run. The test done.

It is one name on my list to arrest. When I arrive though, the house is empty and the city is bustling with the crawling of a few too many guards. My contact is nervous. I soon find out that I am far from the only prominent person that is crossing by.

I have orders to retrieve a man in his better years this time, judging by the date etched beside the name.

It's a family on the run.

Runt and One Ear sniff at the ground and find the trace easily. They are sharp and angry, with their fur standing up and their teeth showing. They were trained for red blood, and now they chase it again.

My guards and I follow the small, narrow street. The houses are in better shape than the huts and miserable buildings in the villages. They are still smaller than most silver homes in this part, even the ones that are not nobility. And they are marked where the measures and every other law have to take marks and signs.

As we chase through the alleyway with our weapons drawn, something moves behind me, and I smell the two shapes.

Runt takes an opportunity to leap into the body to my right, but the one to my left moves fast. Way too fast. It's a fast, leaping motion. A jump. It is not red. It could be silver, but the smell betrays them.

I can't let him escape. But he is too fast. I may never catch him. So far, every target has been docile. Not one has tried to flee.

I try to aim for a leg and shoot. I can't line up a perfect shot. My bullet hits only a wall, leaving one big wound in the brick.

One Ear takes the chance and runs. But even a dog's legs can only bring him so far, and he is so, so fast.

The sound is piercing my ears in needles and tendrils. The crunching of metal, bending, and breaking. It sings in a cacophony of pain as it flies loose, a sirring like an arrow, or a bullet, and then it buries inside flesh with a wet thud. The body of the anomaly drops around fifty feet away. It hits the ground, from a mid-air leap. The man drops like a bird shot out of a tree in the courtyard of a mansion. A long metal piece sticks out of one side of his head. A wet sack with a binder around the arm to show the red status. That was a lie. Not red. Not with that ability.

I don't look at it. I don't look at the corpse. I only watch Ptolemus' hand retreating behind me in a flicker. Larentia told me I would be with her son in less than a week. And her words are the truth. He is pale in the lack of sunshine. I wager I look the same. We are bled out of color that drips in crimson over the stone.

One Ear has his head lowered and sniffs to where the red puddle spreads on the street. His tongue flicks out of his panting mouth and licks once. I pull him back with a worldless whistle and he whines and trots back to me.

Runt has started to drag the other one still alive over the paved way.

After a sharp comment in my guard's direction, I turn. I run towards the other end of the road because I don't want to see the corpse right now.

I turn away from my cousin to let him not see my shaking hand.

"Was killing my target necessary?"

"It is arrest or a kill at display," is all the answer. "Did you want to do it?"

"No." I still don't look at him while we walk and screams and orders pierce through the street behind me. "Why are you here?"

"We have the same destination."

"Ah."

* * *

A jet is waiting at the tiniest landing field.

Runt rolls together in my foot space, watchful. One Ear licks Ptolemus hand once and then huddles around him to sink against his legs. He leans against his boots and makes a low sound before closing his eyes. The grotesque tall bodies of the dogs squeeze in the space to fit.

My cousin's black eyes watch them with ease. He has nothing to fear from them. Even Runt wags her tail when she greeted him.

Just like the dogs, I feel tired. Sitting, traveling somewhere, is the only moment I ever get to rest my eyes. As we start to drift up, I rest my head against his shoulder. A thorn of metal pokes into my scarred cheek, but I don't care.

"I'm sorry," I mutter and shake a little up and down. My head sinks so deep against his shoulder the words are just a muffled sigh.

"For what?" He asks. His breath tickles me. It is an even breath. It is the breath of someone that has control over their thoughts and bodyparts.

I swim in the rattling sounds of the engine and don't answer anymore. I don't dream. I register faint sounds, the breathing of the dogs, the vibration of Ptolemus talking to someone. He puts an arm around me, and I take the comfort of this makeshift arrangement. Just like the night in Harbor Bay, he watches over me while I try to relax.

The jet shakes harder and harder for a while. It feels like we sink, but we don't stand still for long. And then the warmth of his shoulder is gone, but I am too drowsy to complain. After a while, I force my eyes open. The dogs at my feet growl low. It is an alarm that brings me to consciousness. The first thing I notice is the unfamiliar coat I am tugged in, a makeshift blanket of black, soft fabric. It's warmed up and big enough to surround me like some sort of a cocoon. Runt barks once, warning. I follow her yellow eyes.

To my right, on the other row of seats, a pair of waiting, blue eyes watches me. His black hair curls at the tip of his ears. No crown. Maven looks like he could also opt for a short nap in this transport, but knows better. So that is why we stopped. We picked up another passenger.

"Watching someone sleep is very unsettling," I say, voice coarse. Behind me, someone moves, guards, probably. So I raise my manners and keep up protocol. "Your Majesty."

My words only set loose the avalanche of the tiniest smile. "I didn't watch you very long, Lady Viper, don't worry. I am far from interested in that way at all."

Fingers nestling with my makeshift blanket, I loosen it to sit up. The seat beside me is empty. I whistle and Runt below me puts her head on the seat first, then her paws, and jumps. She sits straight and watches him cautiously. One Ear presses hard against my legs.

"Reassuring, because I am far from interested as well." My voice is almost lost in the brimming sounds the jet makes.

Even if I wasn't married and capable of love, he is barely an adult, the idea of it combined with the age discrepancy alone makes my toes curl.

I throw the jacket off now over the armrest. The dogs sniff interested at the dangling sleeves and wag their tails for a moment as they take the scent in.

"I assume you've joined on the way to the prison facility?" I inquire.

He says two words that make me curious. I have never heard them before. As Larentia said, a secret facility is supposed to be kept secret. "Corros Prison."


End file.
